AND 


LABOR 


HREINER 


A 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 


WOMAN 

AND 

LABOR 

BY 

OLIVE    SCHREINER 

AUTHOR    OF 

"THE  STORY  OF  AN  AFRICAN   FARM,"     "DREAMS," 
"DREAM   LIFE  AND   REAL  LIFE,"  ETC. 


THIRD  EDITION 


NEW  YORK 

FREDERICK   A.  STOKES  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1911,  by 
FREDERICK  A.  STOKES  COMPANY 


All  rights  reserved,  including  that  of  translation  into  foreign 
languages,  including  the  Scandinavian 


March,  1911. 


College 
Library 

Ho 
138  I 
537 


DEDICATED 

TO 

CONSTANCE  LYTTON 

"  Glory  of  warrior,  glory  of  orator,  glory  of  song 
Paid  with  a  voice  flying  by  to  be  lost  on  an  endless  aea  — 
Glory  of  virtue,  to  fight,  to  struggle,  to  right  the  wrong  — 
Nay,  but  she  aim'd  not  at  glory,  no  lover  of  glory  she: 
Give  her  the  glory  of  going  on  and  still  to  be." 

TEHTXYSOK. 

OLIVE  SCHKEINEK. 

DE  A AE, 

CAPE  OF  GOOD  HOPE, 
SOUTH  AFBICA. 
1911. 


1158096 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION 3 

I     PARASITISM 27 

II     PARASITISM  (continued) 69 

III     PARASITISM  (continued) 113 

IV     WOMAN  AND  WAR       ......  157 

V     SEX  DIFFERENCES 187 

VI     CERTAIN  OBJECTIONS 207 


INTRODUCTION 


WOMAN  AND   LABOR 

INTRODUCTION 

IT  is  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  to  explain 
this  book.  The  original  title  of  the  book  was 
"Musings  on  Woman  and  Labor." 

It  is,  what  its  name  implies,  a  collection  of 
musings  on  some  of  the  points  connected  with 
woman's  work. 

In  my  early  youth  I  began  to  write  a  book 
on  Woman.  I  continued  the  work  till  ten 
years  ago.  It  necessarily  touched  on  most 
matters  in  which  sex  has  a  part,  however  in- 
completely. 

It  began  by  tracing  the  differences  of  sex 
function  to  their  earliest  appearances  in  life; 
not  only  as  when  in  the  animal  world  two  ame- 
boid globules  coalesce,  and  the  process  of  sex- 
ual generation  almost  unconsciously  begins, 
but  to  its  yet  more  primitive  manifestations 
in  plant  life.  In  the  first  three  chapters  I 

[3] 


WOMAN    AND   LABOR 

traced,  as  far  as  I  was  able,  the  evolution  of 
sex  in  the  different  branches  of  non-human  life. 
Many  large  facts  surprised  me  in  following 
tnis  line  of  thought  by  their  bearing  on  the 
whole  modern  sex  problem.  Such  facts  as 
this,  that  in  the  great  majority  of  species  on 
the  earth  the  female  form  exceeds  the  male  in 
size  and  strength  and  often  in  predatory  in- 
stinct; and  that  sex  relationships  may  assume 
almost  any  form  on  earth  as  the  conditions  of 
life  vary;  and  that,  even  in  their  sexual  rela- 
tion towards  offspring,  those  differences  which 
we,  conventionally,  are  apt  to  suppose  are  in- 
herent in  the  paternal  or  the  maternal  sex 
form,  are  not  inherent — as  when  one  studies 
the  lives  of  certain  toads,  where  the  female  de- 
posits her  eggs  in  cavities  on  the  back  of  the 
male,  where  the  eggs  are  preserved  and 
hatched;  or,  of  certain  sea  animals,  in  which 
the  male  carries  the  young  about  with  him  and 
rears  them  in  a  pouch  formed  of  his  own  sub- 
stance; and  countless  other  such.  Above  all, 
this  important  fact,  which  had  first  impressed 
me  when  as  a  child  I  wandered  alone  in  the 
African  bush,  and  watched  cock-o-veets  sing- 
ing their  inter-knit  love-songs,  and  small  sing- 

[*] 


INTRODUCTION 

ing  birds  building  their  nests  together,  and 
caring  for  and  watching  over,  not  only  their 
young,  but  each  other,  and  which  has  power- 
fully influenced  all  I  have  thought  and  felt  on 
sex  matters  since ; — the  fact  that  along  the  line 
of  bird  life  and  among  certain  of  its  species  sex 
has  attained  its  highest  and  esthetic,  and  one 
might  almost  say  intellectual,  development  on 
earth:  a  point  of  development  to  which  no  hu- 
man race  as  a  whole  has  yet  reached,  and  which 
represents  the  realization  of  the  highest  sexual 
ideal  which  haunts  humanity. 

When  I  had  ended  these  three  chapters  I 
went  on  to  deal  as  far  as  I  was  able  with 
woman's  condition  in  the  most  primitive,  the 
savage  and  semi-savage  states.  I  had  always 
been  strangely  interested  in  watching  the  con- 
dition of  the  native  African  women  in  the 
primitive  society  about  me.  When  I  was 
eighteen  I  had  once  a  conversation  with  a 
Kafir  woman  still  in  her  untouched  primitive 
condition,  a  conversation  which  made  a  more 
profound  impression  on  my  mind  than  any  but 
one  other  incident  connected  with  the  position 
of  woman  has  ever  done.  She  was  a  woman 
whom  I  cannot  think  of  otherwise  than  as  a 

[5] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

woman  of  genius.  In  language  more  eloquent 
and  intense  than  I  have  ever  heard  from  the 
lips  of  any  other  woman,  she  painted  the  con- 
dition of  the  women  of  her  race;  the  labor  of 
women,  the  anguish  of  woman  as  she  grew 
older,  and  the  limitations  of  her  life  closed  in 
about  her,  her  sufferings  under  the  condi- 
tion of  polygamy  and  subjection;  all  this  she 
painted  with  a  passion  and  intensity  I  have  not 
known  equaled;  and  yet,  and  this  was  the  in- 
teresting point,  when  I  went  on  to  question 
her,  combined  with  a  deep  and  almost  fierce 
bitterness  against  life  and  the  unseen  powers 
which  had  shaped  woman  and  her  conditions 
as  they  were,  there  was  hot  one  word  of  bit- 
terness against  the  individual  man,  nor  any 
will  or  intention  to  revolt;  rather,  there  was  a 
stern  and  almost  majestic  attitude  of  accept- 
ance of  the  inevitable;  life  and  the  conditions 
of  her  race  being  what  they  were.  It  was  this 
conversation  which  first  forced  upon  me  the 
fact,  which  I  have  since  come  to  regard  as 
almost  axiomatic,  that  the  women  of  no  race 
or  class  will  ever  rise  in  revolt  or  attempt  to 
bring  about  a  revolutionary  readjustment  of 
their  relation  to  their  society,  however  intense 

[6] 


INTRODUCTION 

their  suffering  and  however  clear  their  per- 
ception of  it,  while  the  welfare  and  persistence 
of  their  society  requires  their  submission:  that,- 
wherever  there  is  a  general  attempt  on  the  part 
of  the  women  of  any  society  to  readjust  their 
position  in  it,  a  close  analysis  will  always  show 
that  the  changed  or  changing  conditions  of  that 
society  have  made  woman's  acquiescence  no 
longer  necessary  or  desirable. 

Another  point  which  it  was  attempted  ade- 
quately to  deal  with  in  this  division  of  the  book 
was  the  probability,  amounting  almost  to  a 
certainty,  that  women's  physical  suffering  and 
weakness  in  childbirth  and  certain  other  direc- 
tions was  the  price  which  woman  has  been  com- 
pelled to  pay  for  the  passing  of  the  race  from 
the  quadrupedal  and  four-handed  state  to  the 
erect,  which  was  essential  if  humanity  as  we 
know  it  was  to  exist  (this  of  course  was  dealt 
with  by  a  close  physiological  study  of  women's 
structure) ;  and  also  to  deal  with  the  highly 
probable,  though  unproved  and  perhaps  im- 
provable, suggestion  that  it  was  mainly  the 
necessity  which  woman  was  under  of  bearing 
her  helpless  young  in  her  arms  while  procuring 
food  for  them  and  herself,  and  of  carrying 

[7] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

them  when  escaping  from  enemies,  that  led  to 
the  entirely  erect  position  being  forced  on  de- 
veloping humanity. 

These  and  many  other  points  throwing  an 
interesting  light  on  the  later  development  of 
women  (such  as  the  relation  between  agricul- 
ture and  the  subjection  of  women)  were  gone 
into  in  this  division  of  the  book  dealing  with 
primitive  and  semi-barbarous  womanhood. 

When  this  division  was  ended,  I  had  them 
typewritten  and  with  the  first  three  chapters 
bound  in  one  volume  about  the  year  1888,  and 
then  went  on  to  work  at  the  last  division,  which 
I  had  already  begun. 

In  this  I  went  on  to  deal  with  what  is  more 
popularly  known  as  the  women's  question: 
with  the  causes  which  in  modern  European 
societies  are  leading  women  to  attempt  re- 
adjustment in  their  relation  to  their  social 
organism;  with  the  direction  in  which  such  re- 
adjustments are  taking  place;  and  with  the 
results  which  in  the  future  it  appears  likely 
such  readjustments  will  produce. 

After  eleven  years,  1899,  I  had  finished 
these  chapters,  and  had  them  bound  in  a  large 
volume  with  the  first  two  divisions.  There 


INTRODUCTION 

then  only  remained  to  revise  the  book  and 
write  a  preface.  In  addition  to  the  prose 
argument  I  had  in  each  chapter  one  or  more 
allegories;  because  while  it  is  easy  clearly  to 
express  abstract  thoughts  in  argumentative 
prose,  whatever  emotion  those  thoughts  awaken 
I  have  not  felt  myself  able  adequately  to 
express  except  in  the  other  form.1  And  I 
had  also  tried  throughout  to  illustrate  the  sub- 
ject with  exactly  those  particular  facts  in  the 
animal  and  human  world,  with  which  I  had 
come  into  personal  contact,  and  which  had 
helped  to  form  the  conclusions  which  were 
given,  as  it  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  in 
dealing  with  sociological  questions  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  exact  way  in  which  a  writer  has 
arrived  at  his  view  is  necessary  in  measuring 
its  worth.  The  work  had  occupied  a  large 
part  of  my  life,  and  I  had  hoped,  whatever 
its  deficiencies,  that  it  might  at  least  stimulate 
other  minds,  perhaps  more  happily  situated, 
to  an  enlarged  study  of  the  question. 

In    1899    I    was   living   in   Johannesburg, 

i  The  allegory  "Three  Dreams  in  a  Desert"  which  T  pub- 
lished about  nineteen  years  ago  was  taken  from  this  book;  and 
I  have  felt  that  perhaps  being  taken  from  its  context  it  was 
not  quite  clear  to  every  one. 

[9] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

when,  owing  to  ill-health,  I  was  ordered  sud- 
denly to  spend  some  time  at  a  lower  level. 
At  the  end  of  two  months  the  Boer  War 
broke  out.  Two  days  after  war  was  pro- 
claimed I  arrived  at  De  Aar  on  my  way  back 
to  the  Transvaal;  but  martial  law  had  al- 
ready been  proclaimed  there,  and  the  mili- 
tary authorities  refused  to  allow  me  to  re- 
turn to  my  home  in  the  Transvaal  and  sent 
me  down  to  the  Colony;  nor  was  I  allowed 
to  send  any  communication  through,  to  any 
person  who  might  have  extended  some  care 
over  my  possessions.  Some  eight  months 
after,  when  the  British  troops  had  taken  and 
entered  Johannesburg,  a  friend,  who,  being 
on  the  British  side,  had  been  allowed  to  go 
up,  wrote  me  that  he  had  visited  my  house 
and  found  it  looted  and  that  all  that  was  of 
value  had  been  taken  or  destroyed;  my  desk 
had  been  forced  open  and  broken  up,  and 
its  contents  set  on  fire  in  the  center  of  the 
room,  so  that  the  roof  was  blackened  over  the 
pile  of  burnt  papers.  He  added  that  there 
was  little  in  the  remnants  of  paper  of  which 
I  could  make  any  use,  but  that  he  had  gath- 
ered and  stored  the  fragments  till  such  time 

[10] 


INTRODUCTION 

as  I  might  be  allowed  to  come  and  see  them. 
I  thus  knew  my  book  had  been  destroyed. 

Some  months  later  in  the  war  when  con- 
fined in  a  little  up-country  hamlet  many  hun- 
dreds of  miles  from  the  coast  and  from  Johan- 
nesburg ;  with  the  brunt  of  the  war  at  that  time 
breaking  round  us,  de  Wet  was  said  to  have 
crossed  the  Orange  River  and  to  have  been 
within  a  few  miles  of  us,  and  the  British 
columns  moved  hither  and  thither.  I  was  liv- 
ing in  a  little  house  on  the  outskirts  of  the 
village,  in  a  single  room,  with  a  stretcher  and 
two  packing-cases  as  furniture,  and  with  only 
my  little  dog  for  company.  Thirty-six  armed 
African  natives  were  set  to  guard  night  and 
day  at  the  doors  and  windows  of  the  house; 
and  I  was  only  allowed  to  go  out  during  cer- 
tain hours  in  the  middle  of  the  day  to  fetch 
water  from  the  fountain  in  the  middle  of  the 
village,  or  to  buy  what  I  needed.  I  was  al- 
lowed to  receive  no  newspapers  or  magazines. 

A  high  barbed  wire  fence,  guarded  by 
armed  natives,  surrounded  the  village,  through 
which  it  would  have  been  death  to  try  to  es- 
cape. All  day  the  pom-poms  from  the  ar- 
mored trains  that  paraded  on  the  railway  line 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

nine  miles  distant  could  be  heard  at  intervals; 
and  at  night  there  was  the  talk  of  the  armed 
natives  as  they  pressed  against  the  windows, 
and  the  tramp  of  the  watch  with  the  end- 
less "Who  goes  there?"  as  they  walked  round 
the  wire  fence  through  the  long,  dark  hours 
when  I  was  neither  allowed  to  light  a  candle 
nor  strike  a  match.  When  a  conflict  was 
fought  near  by,  the  dying  and  wounded  were 
brought  in;  three  men  belonging  to  our  lit- 
tle village  were  led  out  to  execution;  death 
sentences  were  read  in  our  little  market- 
place; our  prison  was  filled  with  our  fellow- 
countrymen;  and  we  did  not  know  from  hour 
to  hour  what  the  next  would  bring  to  us. 

Under  these  conditions  I  felt  it  necessary  I 
should  resolutely  force  my  thought  at  times 
from  the  horror  of  the  world  around  me,  to 
dwell  on  some  abstract  question,  and  it  was 
under  these  circumstances  that  this  little  book 
was  written,  being  a  remembrance  mainly 
drawn  from  one  chapter  of  the  larger  book. 
The  armed  native  guards  standing  against  the 
windows,  it  was  impossible  to  open  the  shut- 
ters, and  the  room  was  therefore  so  dark  that 
even  the  physical  act  of  writing  was  difficult. 

[12] 


INTRODUCTION 

A  year  and  a  half  after,  when  the  war  was 
over  and  peace  had  been  proclaimed  for  about 
four  months,  I  with  difficulty  obtained  a  per- 
mit to  visit  the  Transvaal.  I  found  among 
the  burnt  fragments  the  leathern  back  of  my 
book  intact,  but  the  front  half  of  the  leaves 
had  been  completely  burnt  away;  the  back 
half  of  the  leaves  next  to  the  cover  were  still 
all  there,  but  so  browned  and  scorched  with 
the  flames  that  they  broke  as  you  touched 
them;  and  there  was  nothing  left  but  to  de- 
stroy it.  I  even  then  had  a  hope  that  at  some 
future  time  I  might  yet  rewrite  the  whole 
book.  But  life  is  short;  and  I  have  found 
that  not  only  shall  I  never  rewrite  the  book, 
but  I  shall  not  have  the  health  even  to  fill  out 
and  harmonize  this  little  remembrance  from 
it. 

It  is  with  some  pain  that  I  give  out  this 
fragment.  I  am  only  comforted  by  the 
thought  that  perhaps  all  sincere  and  earnest 
search  after  truth,  even  where  it  fails  to  reach 
it,  yet  often  comes  so  near  to  it  that  other 
minds  more  happily  situated  may  be  led,  by 
pointing  out  its  very  limitations,  to  obtain  a 
larger  view. 

[13] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

I  have  dared  to  give  this  long  and  uninter- 
esting explanation,  not  at  all  because  I  have 
wished,  by  giving  the  conditions  under  which 
it  was  written,  to  make  excuse  for  any  repeti- 
tions or  lack  of  literary  polish  in  the  book,  for 
these  things  matter  very  little;  but  because 
(and  this  matters  very  much)  it  might  lead  to 
misconception  on  the  subject-matter  itself  if 
its  genesis  were  not  understood. 

Not  only  is  it  not  a  general  view  of  the 
whole  vast  body  of  phenomena  connected  with 
woman's  position,  but  it  is  not  even  a  bird's- 
eye  view  of  the  whole  question  of  woman's 
relation  to  labor. 

In  the  original  book  the  matter  of  the 
parasitism  of  woman  filled  only  one  chapter 
out  of  twelve,  and  it  was  mainly  from  this 
chapter  that  this  book  was  drawn.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  parasitism  of  woman  is,  I  think, 
very  vital,  very  important;  it  explains  many 
phenomena  which  nothing  else  explains;  and 
it  will  be  of  increasing  importance.  But  for 
the  moment  there  are  other  aspects  of  woman's 
relation  to  labor  practically  quite  as  pressing. 
In  the  large  book  I  had  devoted  one  whole 
chapter  to  an  examination  of  the  work  woman 

[14] 


INTRODUCTION 

has  done  and  still  does  in  the  modern  world, 
and  the  gigantic  evils  which  arise  from  the 
fact  that  her  labor,  especially  domestic  labor, 
often  the  most  wearisome  and  unending  known 
to  any  section  of  the  human  race,  is  not 
adequately  recognized  or  recompensed.  Es- 
pecially on  this  point  I  have  feared  this  book 
might  lead  to  a  misconception  of  the  great 
insistence  on  the  problem  of  sex  parasitism, 
and  the  lighter  dealing  with  other  aspects  lead 
to  the  impression  that  woman's  domestic  labor 
at  the  present  day  (something  quite  distinct 
from,  though  indirectly  connected  with,  the 
sexual  relation  between  man  and  woman) 
should  not  be  highly  and  most  highly  recog- 
nized and  recompensed.  I  believe  it  will  be 
in  the  future,  and  then  when  woman  gives  up 
her  independent  field  of  labor  for  domestic  or 
marital  duty  of  any  kind,  she  will  not  receive 
her  share  of  the  earnings  of  the  man  as  a  more 
or  less  eleemosynary  benefaction,  placing  her 
in  a  position  of  subjection,  but  an  equal  share, 
as  the  fair  division,  in  an  equal  partnership.1 

i  It  may  be  objected  that  where  a  man  and  woman  have 
valued  each  other  sufficiently  to  select  one  another  from  all 
other  humans  for  a  life-long  physical  union,  it  is  an  imperti- 

[15] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

Especially  I  have  feared  that  the  points  dealt 
with  in  this  little  book,  taken  apart  from  other 
aspects  of  the  question,  might  lead  to  the  con- 
ception that  it  was  intended  to  express  the 
thought  that  it  was  possible  or  desirable  that 
woman  in  addition  to  her  child-bearing  should 
take  from  man  all  his  share  in  the  support 
and  care  of  his  offspring  and  of  any  woman 
who  fulfilled  with  regard  to  himself  domestic 
duties  of  any  kind.  In  the  chapter  in  the 
original  book  devoted  to  man's  labor  in  con- 
nection with  woman  and  with  his  offspring 
more  than  one  hundred  pages  were  devoted 
in  illustrating  how  essential  to  the  humaniz- 
ing and  civilizing  of  man,  and  therefore  of 
the  whole  race,  was  an  increased  sense  of 
sexual  and  parental  responsibility,  and  an 
increased  justice  towards  woman  as  a  domes- 

nence  to  suppose  there  could  be  any  necessity  to  adjust  eco- 
nomic relations.  In  love  there  is  no  first  nor  last!  And  that 
the  desire  of  each  must  be  to  excel  the  other  in  service. 

That  this  should  be  so  is  true;  that  it  is  so  now,  in  the  case 
of  union  between  two  perfectly  morally  developed  humans,  is 
also  true;  and  that  this  condition  may  in  a  distant  future  be 
almost  universal  is  certainly  true.  But  dealing  with  this  mat- 
ter as  a  practical  question  to-day,  we  have  to  consider  not 
what  should  be,  or  what  may  be,  but  what,  given  traditions  and 
institutions  of  our  societies,  is,  to-day. 

[16] 


INTRODUCTION 

tic  laborer.  In  the  last  half  of  the  same 
chapter  I  dealt  at  great  length  with  what 
seems  to  me  the  most  pressing  of  practical 
sex  questions  at  this  moment — man's  attitude 
towards  those  women  who  are  not  engaged  in 
domestic  labor.  That  vast  and  always  in- 
creasing body  of  women,  who  as  modern  con- 
ditions develop  are  thrown  out  into  the  stream 
of  modern  economic  life  to  sustain  themselves 
and  often  others  by  their  own  labor;  and  who 
yet  are  bound  hand  and  foot,  not  by  the  in- 
tellectual or  physical  limitations  of  their  na- 
ture, but  by  artificial  constrictions  and  con- 
ventions, the  remnants  of  a  past  condition  of 
society.  It  is  largely  this  maladjustment, 
which,  wisely  studied  in  all  its  ramifications, 
will  be  found  to  lie  as  the  tap-root  and  central 
source  of  one  of  the  most  terrible  social 
diseases  that  afflict  us. 

The  fact  that  for  equal  work  equally  well 
performed  by  a  man  and  by  a  woman,  it  is 
ordained  that  the  woman  on  the  ground  of 
her  sex  alone  shall  receive  a  less  recompense, 
is  the  nearest  approach  to  a  wilful  and  un- 
qualified "wrong"  in  the  whole  relation  of 
woman  to  society  to-day.  That  males  of  en- 

[17] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

lightenment  and  equity  can  for  an  hour  tolerate 
the  existence  of  this  inequality  has  always 
seemed  to  me  almost  incomprehensible;  and  it 
is  only  explainable  when  one  regards  it  as  a 
result  of  the  blinding  effects  of  custom  and 
habit.  Personally  I  have  always  felt  so  pro- 
foundly on  this  subject,  that  this  and  one 
other  matter  connected  with  woman's  sexual 
relation  to  man  are  the  only  points  connected 
with  woman's  position  in  thinking  of  which  I 
have  always  felt  it  necessary  to  crush  down  in- 
dignation and  almost  fiercely  to  restrain  it,  if 
I  should  maintain  impartiality  of  outlook.  I 
should  therefore  much  regret  if  the  passing 
manner  in  which  this  question  has  been  touched 
on  in  this  little  book  made  it  seem  of  less  vital 
importance  than  I  hold  it. 

In  the  last  chapter  of  the  original  book, 
the  longest,  and  to  me  the  most  important,  I 
dealt  with  the  problems  connected  with  mar- 
riage and  the  personal  relations  of  men  and 
women  in  the  modern  world.  In  it  I  tried  to 
give  expression  to  what  I  believe  to  be  a  great 
truth,  and  one  on  which  I  should  not  fear  to 
challenge  the  verdict  of  long  future  genera- 
tions— that  the  direction  in  which  the  en- 

[18] 


INTRODUCTION 

deavor  of  woman  to  readjust  herself  to  the 
new  conditions  of  life  is  leading  to-day  is  not 
towards  a  greater  sexual  laxity  or  promiscuity 
or  an  increased  self-indulgence,  but  toward  a 
higher  appreciation  of  the  sacredness  of  all 
sex  relations,  and  a  clearer  perception  of  the 
sex  relation  between  man  and  woman  as  the 
basis  of  human  society,  on  whose  integrity, 
beauty,  and  healthfulness  depend  the  health 
and  beauty  of  human  life,  as  a  whole.  Above 
all,  that  it  will  lead  to  a  closer,  more  perma- 
nent, more  emotionally  and  intellectually 
complete  relation  between  the  individual  man 
and  woman.  And  if  in  the  present  disco-ordi- 
nate  transitional  stage  of  our  social  growth 
it  is  found  necessary  to  allow  of  readjustment 
by  means  of  divorce,  it  will  not  be  because 
such  readjustments  will  be  regarded  lightly, 
but  rather  as  when,  in  a  complex  and  delicate 
mechanism  moved  by  a  central  spring,  we  al- 
low in  the  structure  for  the  readjustment  and 
regulation  of  that  spring,  because  on  its  abso- 
lute perfection  of  action  depends  the  movement 
of  the  whole  mechanism. 

In  the  last  pages  of  the  book,  I  tried  to 
express  what  seems  to  me  a  profound  truth 

[19] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

often  overlooked.  That  as  humanity  and 
human  societies  pass  on  slowly  from  their 
present  barbarous  and  semi-savage  condition 
in  matters  of  sex  into  a  higher,  it  will  be 
found,  that  over  and  above  its  function  in 
producing  and  sending  onward  the  physical 
stream  of  life  (a  function  which  humanity 
shares  with  the  most  lowly  animal  and  veg- 
etable forms  of  life,  and  which  even  by  some 
noted  thinkers  of  the  present  day  seems  to 
be  regarded  as  its  only  possible  function),  that 
sex  and  the  sexual  relation  between  man  and 
woman  have  distinct  esthetic,  intellectual,  and 
spiritual  functions  and  ends,  apart  entirely 
from  physical  reproduction.  That  noble  as  is 
the  function  of  the  physical  reproduction  of 
humanity  by  the  union  of  man  and  woman, 
rightly  viewed,  that  union  has  in  it  latent, 
other,  and  even  higher  forms  of  creative  energy 
and  life-dispensing  power,  and  that  its  history 
on  earth  has  only  begun.  As  the  first  wild  rose 
which  hung  from  its  stem  with  its  center  of 
stamens  and  pistils  and  its  single  whorl  of 
pale  petals  had  only  begun  its  course,  and  was 
destined,  as  the  ages  passed,  to  develop  more 
and  more,  stamen  upon  stamen  to  develop  into 

[20] 


INTRODUCTION 

petal  upon  petal,  and  to  assume  a  hundred 
forms  of  joy  and  beauty. 

And  it  would  almost  seem,  that,  on  the  path 
toward  the  higher  development  of  sexual  life 
on  earth,  as  man  has  so  often  led  in  other 
paths,  that  here  it  is  perhaps  woman,  by  reason 
of  those  very  sexual  conditions  which  in  the 
past  have  crushed  and  trammeled  her,  who  is 
bound  to  lead  the  way,  and  man  to  follow. 
So  that  it  may  be  that  at  last,  sexual  love — 
that  tired  angel  who  through  the  ages  has  pre- 
sided over  the  march  of  humanity,  with  dis- 
traught eyes,  with  feather-shafts  broken,  and 
white  wings  drabbled  in  the  mires  of  lust  and 
greed,  his  golden  locks  caked  over  with  the 
dust  of  injustice  and  oppression — till  those 
looking  at  him  have  sometimes  cried  in  terror, 
"He  is  the  Evil  and  not  the  Good  of  life!"  and 
have  sought,  if  it  were  possible,  to  exterminate 
him — shall  yet,  at  last,  with  eyes  bathed  from 
the  mire  and  dust  in  the  stream  of  friend- 
ship and  freedom,  leap  upwards,  his  white 
wings  spread,  resplendent  in  the  sunshine  of  a 
distant  future — the  essentially  Good  and 
Beautiful  of  human  existence. 

I  have  given  this  long  and  wearisome  ex- 
[21] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

planation  of  the  scope  and  origin  of  this  little 
book  because  I  feel  that  it  might  lead  to  grave 
misunderstanding  were  it  not  understood  how 
it  came  to  be  written. 

I  have  inscribed  it  to  my  friend,  Lady 
Constance  Lytton;  not  because  I  think  it 
worthy  of  her,  nor  because  of  the  splendid  part 
she  has  played  in  the  struggle  of  the  women 
fighting  to-day  in  England  for  certain  forms 
of  freedom  for  all  women.  It  is,  if  I  may 
be  allowed  without  violating  the  sanctity  of 
a  close  personal  friendship  so  to  say,  be- 
cause she,  with  one  or  two  other  men  and 
women  I  have  known,  have  embodied  for  me 
the  highest  ideal  of  human  nature,  in  which 
intellectual  power  and  strength  of  will  are 
combined  with  an  infinite  tenderness  and 
wide  human  sympathy,  a  combination  which, 
whether  in  the  person  of  the  man  or  the 
woman,  is  essential  to  the  existence  of  the  fully 
rounded  and  harmonized  human  creature ;  and 
which  an  English  woman  of  genius  summed 
in  one  line  when  she  cried  in  her  invocation  of 
her  great  French  sister : — 

"Thou  large-brained  woman  and  large-hearted  man !" 

[**] 


INTRODUCTION 

One  word  more  I  should  like  to  add,  as  I 
may  not  again  speak  or  write  on  this  subject. 
I  should  like  to  say  to  the  men  and  women 
of  the  generations  which  will  come  after  us 
— "You  will  look  back  at  us  with  astonish- 
ment! You  will  wonder  at  passionate  strug- 
gles that  accomplished  so  little ;  at  the,  to  you, 
obvious  paths  to  attain  our  ends  which  we  did 
not  take;  at  the  intolerable  evils  before  which 
it  will  seem  to  you  we  sat  down  passive;  at 
the  great  truths  staring  us  in  the  face,  which 
we  failed  to  see;  at  the  truths  we  grasped  at, 
but  could  never  get  our  fingers  quite  round. 
You  will  marvel  at  the  labor  that  ended  in  so 
little; — but,  what  you  will  never  know  is  how 
it  was  thinking  of  you  and  for  you,  that  we 
struggled  as  we  did  and  accomplished  the  little 
which  we  have  done ;  that  it  was  in  the  thought 
of  your  larger  realization  and  fuller  life  that 
we  found  consolation  for  the  futilities  of  our 
own." 

"All  I  aspire  to  be,  and  was  not,  comforts  me." 

o.  s. 


[23] 


PARASITISM 


CHAPTER  I 

PARASITISM 

IN  that  clamor  which  has  arisen  in  the 
modern  world,  where  now  this,  and  then  that, 
is  demanded  for  and  by  large  bodies  of 
modern  women,  he  who  listens  carefully  may 
detect  as  a  keynote,  beneath  all  the  clamor, 
a  demand  which  may  be  embodied  in  such  a 
cry  as  this:  Give  us  labor  and  the  training 
which  fits  for  labor!  We  demand  thisf  not 
for  ourselves  alone,  but  for  the  race. 

If  this  demand  be  logically  expanded,  it 
will  take  such  form  as  this:  Give  us  labor! 
for  countless  ages,  for  thousands,  millions  it 
may  be,  we  have  labored.  When  first  man 
wandered,  the  naked,  newly-erected  savage, 
and  hunted,  and  fought,  we  wandered  with 
him:  each  step  of  his  was  ours.  Within  our 
bodies  we  bore  the  race,  on  our  shoulders  we 
carried  it;  we  sought  the  roots  and  plants  for 
its  food;  and,  when  man's  barbed  arrow  or 

[27] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

hook  brought  the  game,  our  hands  dressed  it. 
Side  by  side,  the  savage  man  and  the  savage 
woman,  we  wandered  free  together  and  la- 
bored free  together.  And  we  were  contented! 

Then  a  change  came. 

We  ceased  from  our  wanderings,  and, 
camping  upon  one  spot  of  earth,  again  the 
labors  of  life  were  divided  between  us.  While 
man  went  forth  to  hunt,  or  to  battle  with  the 
foe  who  would  have  dispossessed  us  of  all,  we 
labored  on  the  land.  We  hoed  the  earth,  we 
reaped  the  grain,  we  shaped  the  dwellings, 
we  wove  the  clothing,  we  modeled  the  earthen 
vessels  and  drew  the  lines  upon  them,  which 
were  humanity's  first  attempt  at  domestic  art ; 
we  studied  the  properties  and  uses  of  plants, 
and  our  old  women  were  the  first  physicians 
of  the  race,  as  often,  its  first  priests  and 
prophets. 

We  fed  the  race  at  our  breast,  we  bore  it 
on  our  shoulders;  through  us  it  was  shaped, 
fed,  and  clothed.  Labor  more  toilsome  and 
unending  than  that  of  man  was  ours;  yet  did 
we  never  cry  out  that  it  was  too  heavy  for  us. 
While  savage  man  lay  in  the  sunshine  on  his 
skins,  resting,  that  he  might  be  fitted  for  war 

[28] 


PARASITISM 

or  the  chase,  or  while  he  shaped  his  weapons 
of  death,  he  ate  and  drank  that  which  our 
hands  had  provided  for  him;  and  while  we 
knelt  over  our  grindstone,  or  hoed  in  the  fields, 
with  one  child  in  our  womb,  perhaps,  and  one 
on  our  back,  toiling  till  the  young  body  was 
old  before  its  time — did  we  ever  cry  out  that 
the  labor  allotted  to  us  was  too  hard  for  us? 
Did  we  not  know  that  the  woman  who  threw 
down  her  burden  was  as  a  man  who  cast  away 
his  shield  in  battle — a  coward  and  a  traitor 
to  his  race?  Man  fought — that  was  his  work; 
we  fed  and  nurtured  the  race — that  was  ours. 
We  knew  that  upon  our  labors,  even  as  upon 
man's,  depended  the  life  and  well-being  of  the 
people  whom  we  bore.  We  endured  our  toil, 
as  man  bore  his  wounds,  silently ;  and  we  were 
content. 

Then  again  a  change  came. 

Ages  passed,  and  time  was  when  it  was  no 
longer  necessary  that  all  men  should  go  to  the 
hunt  or  the  field  of  war;  and  when  only  one 
in  five,  or  one  in  ten,  or  but  one  in  twenty, 
was  needed  continually  for  these  labors. 
Then  our  fellow-man,  having  no  longer  full 
occupation  in  his  old  fields  of  labor,  began  to 

[29] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

take  his  share  in  ours.  He  too  began  to  cul- 
tivate the  field,  to  build  the  house,  to  grind 
the  corn  (or  make  his  male  slaves  do  it) ;  and 
the  hoe,  and  the  potter's  tools,  and  the  thatch- 
ing-needle, and  at  last  even  the  grindstones 
which  we  first  had  picked  up  and  smoothed 
to  grind  the  food  for  our  children,  began  to 
pass  from  our  hands  into  his.  The  old,  sweet 
life  of  the  open  fields  was  ours  no  more;  we 
moved  within  the  gates,  where  the  time  passes 
more  slowly  and  the  world  is  sadder  than  in 
the  air  outside ;  but  we  had  our  own  work  still, 
and  were  content. 

If,  indeed,  we  might  no  longer  grow  the 
food  for  our  people,  we  were  still  its  dressers ; 
if  we  did  not  always  plant  and  prepare  the 
flax  and  hemp,  we  still  wove  the  garments  for 
our  race;  if  we  did  no  longer  raise  the  house 
walls,  the  tapestries  that  covered  them  were 
the  work  of  our  hands ;  we  brewed  the  ale,  and 
the  simples  which  were  used  as  medicines  we 
distilled  and  prescribed;  and,  close  about  our 
feet,  from  birth  to  manhood,  grew  up  the  chil- 
dren whom  we  had  borne;  their  voices  were 
always  in  our  ears.  At  the  doors  of  our 
houses  we  sat  with  our  spinning-wheels,  and 

[30] 


PARASITISM 

we  looked  out  across  the  fields  that  were  once 
ours  to  labor  in — and  were  contented.  Lord's 
wife,  peasant's,  or  burgher's,  we  all  still  had 
our  work  to  do! 

A  thousand  years  ago,  had  one  gone  to 
some  great  dame,  questioning  her  why  she  did 
not  go  out  a-hunting  or  a-fighting,  or  enter 
the  great  hall  to  dispense  justice  and  confer 
upon  the  making  of  laws,  she  would  have  an- 
swered: "Am  I  a  fool  that  you  put  to  me 
such  questions?  Have  I  not  a  hundred  maid- 
ens to  keep  at  work  at  spinning-wheels  and 
needles?  With  my  own  hands  daily  do  I 
not  dispense  bread  to  over  a  hundred  folk? 
In  the  great  hall  go  and  see  the  tapestries  I 
with  my  maidens  have  created  by  the  labors 
of  years,  and  which  we  shall  labor  over  for 
twenty  more,  that  my  children's  children  may 
see  recorded  the  great  deeds  of  their  fore- 
fathers. In  my  store-room  are  there  not 
salves  and  simples,  that  my  own  hands  have 
prepared  for  the  healing  of  my  household  and 
the  sick  in  the  country  round?  Ill  would  it 
go  indeed,  if  when  the  folk  came  home  from 
war  and  the  chase  of  wild  beasts,  weary  or 
wounded,  they  found  all  the  womenfolk  gone 

[31] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

out  a-hunting  and  a-fighting,  and  none  there 
to  dress  their  wounds,  or  prepare  their  meat, 
or  guide  and  rule  the  household!  Better  far 
might  my  lord  and  his  followers  come  and 
help  us  with  our  work,  than  that  we  should  go 
to  help  them!  You  are  surely  bereft  of  all 
wit.  What  becomes  of  the  country  if  the 
women  forsake  their  toil?" 

And  the  burgher's  wife,  asked  why  she  did 
not  go  to  labor  in  her  husband's  workshop, 
or  away  into  the  market-place,  or  go  a-trad- 
ing  to  foreign  countries,  would  certainly  have 
answered:  "I  am  too  busy  to  speak  with 
such  as  you!  The  bread  is  in  the  oven  (al- 
ready I  smell  it  a-burning),  the  winter  is 
coming  on,  and  my  children  lack  good  woolen 
hose  and  my  husband  needs  a  warm  coat.  I 
have  six  vats  of  ale  all  a-brewing,  and  I  have 
daughters  whom  I  must  teach  to  spin  and 
sew,  and  the  babies  are  clinging  round  my 
knees.  And  you  ask  me  why  I  do  not  go 
abroad  to  seek  for  new  labors!  God-sooth! 
Would  you  have  me  to  leave  my  household  to 
starve  in  summer  and  die  of  cold  in  winter, 
and  my  children  to  go  untrained,  while  I  gad 
about  to  seek  for  other  work?  A  man  must 

[32] 


PARASITISM 

have  his  belly  full  and  his  back  covered  be- 
fore all  things  in  life.  Who,  think  you,  would 
spin  and  bake  and  brew,  and  rear  and  train 
my  babes,  if  I  went  abroad?  New  labor,  in- 
deed, when  the  days  are  not  long  enough,  and 
I  have  to  toil  far  into  the  night!  I  have  no 
time  to  talk  with  fools!  Who  will  rear  and 
shape  the  nation  if  I  do  not? " 

And  the  young  maiden  at  the  cottage  door, 
beside  her  wheel,  asked  why  she  was  content 
and  did  not  seek  new  fields  of  labor,  would 
surely  have  answered:  "Go  away,  I  have  no 
time  to  listen  to  you.  Do  you  not  see  that 
I  am  spinning  here  that  I  too  may  have  a 
home  of  my  own?  I  am  weaving  the  linen 
garments  that  shall  clothe  my  household  in  the 
long  years  to  come!  I  cannot  marry  till  the 
chest  upstairs  be  full.  You  cannot  hear  it, 
but  as  I  sit  here  alone,  spinning,  far  off  across 
the  hum  of  my  spinning-wheel  I  hear  the 
voices  of  my  little  unborn  children  calling  to 
me — 'O  mother,  mother,  make  haste,  that  we 
may  be!' — and  sometimes,  when  I  seem  to  be 
looking  out  across  my  wheel  into  the  sunshine, 
it  is  the  blaze  of  my  own  fireside  that  I  see, 
and  the  light  shines  on  the  faces  round  it;  and 

[33] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

I  spin  on  the  faster  and  the  steadier  when  I 
think  of  what  shall  come.  Do  you  ask  me 
why  I  do  not  go  out  and  labor  in  the  fields 
with  the  lad  whom  I  have  chosen?  Is  his 
work,  then,  indeed  more  needed  than  mine  for 
the  raising  of  that  home  that  shall  be  ours? 
Oh,  very  hard  I  will  labor,  for  him  and  for 
my  children,  in  the  long  years  to  come.  But 
I  cannot  stop  to  talk  to  you  now.  Far  off, 
over  the  hum  of  my  spinning-wheel,  I  hear  the 
voices  of  my  children  calling,  and  I  must 
hurry  on.  Do  you  ask  me  why  I  do  not  seek 
for  labor  whose  hands  are  full  to  bursting? 
Who  will  give  folk  to  the  nation  if  I  do 
not?" 

Such  would  have  been  our  answer  in 
Europe  in  the  ages  of  the  past,  if  asked  the 
question  why  we  were  contented  with  our  field 
of  labor  and  sought  no  other.  Man  had  his 
work;  we  had  ours.  We  knew  that  we  up- 
bore our  world  on  our  shoulders;  and  that 
through  the  labor  of  our  hands  it  was  sus- 
tained and  strengthened — and  we  were  con- 
tented. 

But  now,  again  a  change  has  come. 

Something  that  is  entirely  new  has  entered 
[34] 


PARASITISM 

into  the  field  of  human  labor,  and  left  noth- 
ing as  it  was. 

In  man's  fields  of  toil,  change  has  accom- 
plished, and  is  yet  more  quickly  accomplish- 
ing, itself. 

On  lands  where  once  fifty  men  and  youths 
toiled  with  their  cattle,  to-day  one  steam- 
plough,  guided  by  but  two  pair  of  hands, 
passes  swiftly;  and  an  automatic  reaper  in 
one  day  reaps  and  binds  and  prepares  for  the 
garner  the  produce  of  fields  it  would  have 
taken  a  hundred  strong  male  arms  to  harvest 
in  the  past.  The  iron  tools  and  weapons, 
only  one  of  which  it  took  an  ancient  father  of 
our  race  long  months  of  stern  exertion  to  ex- 
tract from  ore  and  bring  to  shape  and  temper, 
are  now  poured  forth  by  steam-driven  ma- 
chinery as  a  mill-pond  pours  forth  its  water; 
and  even  in  war,  the  male's  ancient  and  espe- 
cial field  of  labor,  a  complete  reversal  of  the 
ancient  order  has  taken  place.  Time  was 
when  the  size  and  strength  of  the  muscles  in 
a  man's  legs  and  arms,  and  the  strength  and 
size  of  his  body,  largely  determined  his  fight- 
ing powers,  and  an  Achilles  or  a  Richard 
Coeur  de  Lion,  armed  only  with  his  spear  or 

[35]  ' 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

battle-ax,  made  a  host  fly  before  him;  to-day 
the  puniest  manikin  behind  a  modern  Maxim 
gun  may  mow  down  in  perfect  safety  a  pha- 
lanx of  heroes  whose  legs  and  arms  and  phys- 
ical powers  a  Greek  god  might  have  envied, 
but  who,  having  not  the  modern  machinery 
of  war,  fall  powerless.  The  day  of  the  pri- 
mary import  to  humanity  of  the  strength  in 
man's  extensor  and  flexor  muscles,  whether 
in  labors  of  war  or  of  peace,  is  gone  by  for- 
ever; and  the  day  of  the  all-importance  of  the 
culture  and  activity  of  man's  brain  and  nerve 
has  already  come. 

The  brain  of  one  consumptive  German 
chemist,  who  in  his  laboratory  compounds  a 
new  explosive,  has  more  effect  upon  the  wars 
of  the  modern  peoples  than  ten  thousand  sol- 
dierly legs  and  arms  and  the  man  who  invents 
one  new  labor-saving  machine  may,  through 
the  cerebration  of  a  few  days,  have  performed 
the  labor  it  would  otherwise  have  taken  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  his  lusty  fellows  dec- 
ades to  accomplish. 

Year  by  year,  month  by  month,  and  almost 
hour  by  hour,  this  change  is  increasingly 
showing  itself  in  the  field  of  modern  labor; 

[36] 


PARASITISM 

and  crude  muscular  force,  whether  in  man  or 
beast,  sinks  continually  in  its  value  in  the 
world  of  human  toil;  while  intellectual  power, 
virility,  and  activity,  and  that  culture  which 
leads  to  the  mastery  of  the  inanimate  forces 
of  nature,  to  the  invention  of  machinery,  and 
to  that  delicate  manipulative  skill  often  re- 
quired in  guiding  it,  becomes  ever  of  greater 
and  greater  importance  to  the  race.  Already 
to-day  we  tremble  on  the  verge  of  a  dis- 
covery, which  may  come  to-morrow  or  the 
next  day,  when,  through  the  attainment  of  a 
simple  and  cheap  method  of  controlling  some 
widely  diffused,  everywhere  accessible,  natu- 
ral force  (such,  for  instance,  as  the  force  of 
the  great  tidal  wave)  there  will  at  once  and 
for  ever  pass  away  even  that  comparatively 
small  value  which  still,  in  our  present  stage 
of  material  civilization,  clings  to  the  expendi- 
ture of  mere  crude,  mechanical,  human  en- 
ergy; and  the  creature,  however  physically 
powerful,  who  can  merely  pull,  push,  and 
lift,  much  after  the  mannej  of  a  machine,  will 
have  no  further  value  in  the  field  of  human  la- 
bor. 

Therefore,  even  to-day,  we  find  that  wher- 
[37] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

ever  that  condition  which  we  call  modern  civi- 
lization prevails,  and  in  proportion  as  it  tends 
to  prevail — wherever  steam-power,  electricity, 
or  the  forces  of  wind  and  water,  are  compelled 
by  man's  intellectual  activity  to  act  as  the 
motor-powers  in  the  accomplishment  of  human 
toil,  wherever  the  delicate  adaptations  of  scien- 
tifically constructed  machinery  are  taking  the 
place  of  the  simple  manipulation  of  the  human 
hand — there  has  arisen,  all  the  world  over,  a 
large  body  of  males  who  find  that  their  an- 
cient fields  of  labor  have  slipped  or  are  slip- 
ping from  them,  and  who  discover  that  the 
modern  world  has  no  place  or  need  for  them. 
At  the  gates  of  our  dockyards,  in  our  streets, 
and  in  our  fields,  are  to  be  found  everywhere, 
in  proportion  as  modern  civilization  is  really 
dominant,  men  whose  bulk  and  mere  animal 
strength  would  have  made  them  as  warriors 
invaluable  members  of  any  primitive  com- 
munity, and  who  would  have  been  valuable 
even  in  any  simpler  civilization  than  our  own 
as  machines  of  toil;  but  who,  owing  to  lack 
of  intellectual  power  or  delicate  manual  train- 
ing, have  now  no  form  of  labor  to  offer  so- 
ciety which  it  stands  really  in  need  of,  and 

[38] 


PARASITISM 

who  therefore  tend  to  form  our  Great  Male 
Unemployed — a  body  which  finds  the  only 
powers  it  possesses  so  little  needed  by  its  fel- 
lows that,  in  return  for  its  intensest  physical 
labor,  it  hardly  earns  the  poorest  sustenance. 
The  material  conditions  of  life  have  been 
rapidly  modified,  and  the  man  has  not  been 
modified  with  them;  machinery  has  largely 
filled  his  place  in  his  old  field  of  labor,  and  he 
has  found  no  new  one. 

It  is  from  these  men,  who,  viewed  from 
the  broad  humanitarian  standpoint,  are  of 
the  most  lovable  and  interesting  type,  and 
who  might  in  a  simpler  state  of  society  have 
been  the  heroes,  leaders,  and  chiefs  of  their 
people,  that  there  arises  in  the  modern  world 
the  bitter  cry  of  the  male  unemployed:  "Give 
us  labor  or  we  die!"  l 

Yet  it  is  only  upon  one,  and  a  compara- 
tively small,  section  of  the  males  of  the  modern 

1  The  problem  of  the  unemployed  male  is,  of  course,  not 
nearly  so  modern  as  that  of  the  unemployed  female.  It  may 
be  said  in  England  to  have  taken  its  rise  in  almost  its  present 
form  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century,  when  economic  changes 
began  to  sever  the  agricultural  laborer  from  the  land,  and  rob 
him  of  his  ancient  forms  of  social  toil.  Still,  in  its  most  acute 
form,  it  may  be  called  a  modern  problem. 

[39] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

civilized  world  that  these  changes  in  the  ma- 
terial conditions  of  life  have  told  in  such  fash- 
ion as  to  take  all  useful  occupation  from  them 
and  render  them  wholly  or  partly  worthless  to 
society.  If  the  modern  man's  field  of  labor 
has  contracted  at  one  end  (the  physical),  at 
the  other  (the  intellectual)  it  has  immeasur- 
ably expanded!  If  machinery  and  the  com- 
mand of  inanimate  motor-forces  have  rendered 
of  comparatively  little  value  the  male's  mere 
physical  motor-power,  the  demand  upon  his 
intellectual  faculties,  the  call  for  the  expend- 
iture of  nervous  energy,  and  the  exercise  of 
delicate  manipulative  skill  in  the  labor  of  hu- 
man life,  have  immeasurably  increased. 

In  a  million  new  directions  forms  of  hon- 
ored and  remunerative  social  labor  are  open- 
ing up  before  the  feet  of  the  modern  man, 
which  his  ancestors  never  dreamed  of ;  and  day 
by  day  they  yet  increase  in  numbers  and  im- 
portance. The  steamship,  the  hydraulic  lift, 
the  patent  road-maker,  the  railway-train,  the 
electric  tram-car,  the  steam-driven  mill, 
the  Maxim  gun  and  the  torpedo  boat,  once 
made,  may  perform  their  labors  with  the  guid- 
ance and  assistance  of  comparatively  few 

[40] 


hands;  but  a  whole  army  of  men  of  science, 
engineers,  clerks,  and  highly-trained  workmen 
is  necessary  for  their  invention,  construction, 
and  maintenance.  In  the  domains  of  art,  of 
science,  of  literature,  and  above  all  in  the 
field  of  politics  and  government,  an  almost 
infinite  extension  has  taken  place  in  the  fields 
of  male  labor.  Where  in  primitive  times 
woman  was  often  the  only  builder,  and  pat- 
terns she  daubed  on  her  hut  walls  or  traced 
on  her  earthen  vessels  the  only  attempts  at 
domestic  art;  and  where  later  but  an  indi- 
vidual here  and  there  was  required  to  design 
a  king's  palace  or  a  god's  temple  or  to  orna- 
ment it  with  statues  or  paintings,  to-day  a 
mighty  army  of  men,  a  million  strong,  is  em- 
ployed in  producing  plastic  art  alone,  both 
high  and  low,  from  the  traceries  on  wall- 
paper and  the  illustrations  in  penny  journals, 
to  the  production  of  the  pictures  and  statues 
which  adorn  the  national  collections,  and  a 
mighty  new  field  of  toil  has  opened  be- 
fore the  anciently  hunting  and  fighting 
male.  Where  once  one  ancient  witch-doc- 
tress  may  have  been  the  only  creature  in  a 
whole  district  who  studied  the  nature  of  herbs 

[41] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

and  earths,  or  a  solitary  wizard  experiment- 
ing on  poisons  was  the  only  individual  in  a 
whole  territory  interrogating  nature;  and 
where  later,  a  few  score  of  alchemists  and  as- 
trologers only  were  engaged  in  examining 
the  natures  of  substances  or  the  movement  of 
planets,  to-day  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
men  in  every  civilized  community  are  labor- 
ing to  unravel  the  mysteries  of  nature,  and 
the  practical  chemist,  the  physician,  the  anat- 
omist, the  engineer,  the  astronomer,  the 
mathematician,  the  electrician,  form  a  mighty 
and  always  increasingly  important  army  of 
male  laborers.  Where  once  an  isolated  bard 
supplied  a  nation  with  its  literature,  or  where 
later  a  few  thousand  priests  and  men  of  letters 
wrote  and  transcribed  for  the  few  to  read,  to- 
day literature  gives  labor  to  a  multitude  of 
males  almost  as  countless  as  a  swarm  of  lo- 
custs. From  the  penny-a-liner  to  the  artist 
and  thinker,  the  demand  for  their  labor  con- 
tinually increases.  Where  one  town-crier 
with  stout  legs  and  lusty  lungs  was  once  all- 
sufficient  to  spread  the  town  and  country 
news,  a  score  of  men  now  sit  daily  pen  in  hand, 
preparing  the  columns  of  the  morning's  paper, 

[4ft] 


PARASITISM 

and  far  into  the  night  a  hundred  compositors 
are  engaged  in  a  labor  which  requires  a  higher 
culture  of  brain  and  finger  than  most  ancient 
kings  and  rulers  possessed.  Even  in  the  la- 
bors of  war,  the  most  brutal  and  primitive 
of  the  occupations  lingering  on  into  civilized 
life  from  the  savage  state,  the  new  demand 
for  labor  of  an  intellectual  kind  is  enormous. 
The  invention,  construction,  and  working  of 
one  Krupp  gun,  though  its  mere  discharge 
hardly  demands  more  crude  muscular  ex- 
ertion than  a  savage  expends  in  throwing  his 
boomerang,  yet  represents  an  infinitude  of 
intellectual  care  and  thought,  far  greater  than 
that  which  went  to  the  shaping  of  all  the 
weapons  of  a  primitive  army.  Above  all,  in 
the  domain  of  politics  and  government,  where 
once  a  king  or  queen,  aided  by  a  handful  of 
councilors,  was  alone  practically  concerned 
in  the  labors  of  national  guidance  or  legis- 
lation; to-day,  owing  to  the  rapid  means  of 
intercommunication,  printing,  and  the  con- 
sequent diffusion  of  political  and  social  infor- 
mation throughout  a  territory,  it  has  become 
possible,  for  the  first  time,  for  all  adults  in  a 
large  community  to  keep  themselves  closely 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

informed  on  all  national  affairs;  and  in  every 
highly-civilized  state  the  ordinary  male  has 
been  almost  compelled  to  take  his  share,  how- 
ever small,  in  the  duties  and  labors  of  legis- 
lation and  government.  Thus  there  has 
opened  before  the  mass  of  men  a  vast  new 
sphere  of  labor  undreamed  of  by  their  ances- 
tors. In  every  direction  the  change  which 
material  civilization  has  wrought,  while  it  has 
militated  against  that  comparatively  small 
section  of  males  who  have  nothing  to  offer  so- 
ciety but  the  expenditure  of  their  untrained 
muscular  energy  (inflicting  much  and  often 
completely  unmerited  suffering  upon  them), 
has  immeasurably  extended  the  field  of  male 
labor  as  a  whole.  Never  before  in  the  history 
of  the  earth  has  the  man's  field  of  remunera- 
tive toil  been  so  wide,  so  interesting,  so  com- 
plex, and  in  its  results  so  all-important  to  so- 
ciety; never  before  has  the  male  sex,  taken 
as  a  whole,  been  so  fully  and  strenuously  em- 
ployed. 

So  much  is  this  the  case,  that,  exactly  as 
in  the  earlier  conditions  of  society  an  excessive 
and  almost  crushing  amount  of  the  most  im- 
portant social  labor  generally  devolved  upon 

[44] 


PARASITISM 

the  female,  so  under  modern  civilized  condi- 
tions among  the  wealthier  and  fully  civilized 
classes,  an  unduly  excessive  share  of  labor 
tends  to  devolve  upon  the  male.  That  almost 
entirely  modern,  morbid  condition,  affecting 
brain  and  nervous  system,  and  shortening  the 
lives  of  thousands  in  modern  civilized  societies, 
which  is  vulgarly  known  as  "overwork"  or 
"nervous  breakdown,"  is  but  one  evidence  of 
the  even  excessive  share  of  mental  labor  de- 
volving upon  the  modern  male  of  the  cultured 
classes,  who,  in  addition  to  maintaining  him- 
self, has  frequently  dependent  upon  him  a 
larger  or  smaller  number  of  entirely  parasitic 
females.  But,  whatever  the  result  of  the 
changes  of  modern  civilization  may  be  with 
regard  to  the  male,  he  certainly  cannot  com- 
plain that  they  have  as  a  whole  robbed  him 
of  his  fields  of  labor,  diminished  his  share  in 
the  conduct  of  life,  or  reduced  him  to  a  con- 
dition of  morbid  inactivity. 

In  our  woman's  field  of  labor,  matters  have 
tended  to  shape  themselves  wholly  otherwise! 
The  changes  which  have  taken  place  during 
the  last  centuries,  and  which  we  sum  up  un- 
der the  compendious  term  "modern  civiliza- 

[45] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 
p 
tion,"  have  tended  to  rob  woman,  not  merely 

in  part  but  almost  wholly,  of  the  more  valua- 
ble part  of  her  ancient  domain  of  productive 
and  social  labor ;  and,  where  there  has  not  been 
a  determined  and  conscious  resistance  on  her 
part,  have  nowhere  spontaneously  tended  to 
open  out  to  her  new  and  compensatory  fields. 

It  is  this  fact  which  constitutes  our  modern 
"Woman's  Labor  Problem." 

Our  spinning-wheels  are  all  broken;  in  a 
thousand  huge  buildings  steam-driven  looms, 
guided  by  a  few  hundred  thousands  of  hands 
(often  those  of  men),  produce  the  clothings 
of  half  the  world ;  and  we  dare  no  longer  say, 
proudly,  as  of  old,  that  we  and  we  alone  clothe 
our  peoples. 

Our  hoes  and  our  grindstones  passed  from 
us  long  ago,  when  the  plowman  and  the  mil- 
ler took  our  place  but  for  a  time  we  kept  fast 
possession  of  the  kneading-trough  and  the 
brewing-vat.  To-day,  steam  often  shapes  our 
bread,  and  the  loaves  are  set  down  at  our  very 
door — it  may  be  by  a  man-driven  motor-carl 
The  history  of  our  household  drinks  we  know 
no  longer;  we  merely  see  them  set  before  us 
at  our  tables.  Day  by  day  machine-prepared 

[46]  ' 


PARASITISM 

and  factory-produced  viands  take  a  larger  and 
larger  place  in  the  dietary  of  rich  and  poor,  till 
the  working  man's  wife  places  before  her  house- 
hold little  that  is  of  her  own  preparation; 
while  among  the  wealthier  classes,  so  far  has 
domestic  change  gone  that  men  are  not  in- 
frequently found  laboring  in  our  houses  and 
kitchens,  and  even  standing  behind  our  chairs 
ready  to  do  all  but  actually  place  the  morsels 
of  food  between  our  feminine  lips.  The  army 
of  rosy  milkmaids  has  passed  away  for  ever, 
to  give  place  to  the  cream-separator  and  the, 
largely,  male-and-machinery-manipulated  but- 
ter pat.  In  every  direction  the  ancient  saw, 
that  it  was  exclusively  the  woman's  sphere 
to  prepare  viands  of  her  household,  has  be- 
come, in  proportion  as  civilization  has  per- 
fected itself,  an  antiquated  lie. 

Even  the  minor  domestic  operations  are 
tending  to  pass  out  of  the  circle  of  woman's 
labor.  In  modern  cities  our  carpets  are 
beaten,  our  windows  cleaned,  our  floors  pol- 
ished, by  machinery,  or  extra  domestic,  and 
often  male  labor.  Change  has  gone  much 
farther  than  to  the  mere  taking  from  us  of 
the  preparation  of  the  materials  from  which 

[47] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  clothing  is  formed.  Already  the  domes- 
tic sewing-machine,  which  has  supplanted 
almost  entirely  the  ancient  needle,  begins 
to  become  antiquated,  and  a  thousand  ma- 
chines driven  in  factories  by  central  engines 
are  supplying  not  only  the  husband  and  son, 
but  the  woman  herself,  with  almost  every 
article  of  clothing  from  vest  to  jacket;  while 
among  the  wealthy  classes,  the  male  dress- 
designer  with  his  hundred  male-milliners  and 
dress-makers  is  helping  finally  to  explode 
the  ancient  myth,  that  it  is  woman's  exclusive 
sphere,  and  a  part  of  her  domestic  toil,  to  cut 
and  shape  the  garments  she  or  her  household 
wear. 

Year  by  year,  day  by  day,  there  is  a  silently 
working  but  determined  tendency  for  the 
sphere  of  woman's  domestic  labors  to  con- 
tract itself;  and  the  contraction  is  marked 
exactly  in  proportion  as  that  complex  condi- 
tion which  we  term  "modern  civilization"  is 
advanced. 

It  manifests  itself  more  in  England  and 
America  than  in  Italy  and  Spain,  more  in 
great  cities  than  in  country  places,  more 
among  the  wealthier  classes  than  the  poorer, 

[48] 


PARASITISM 

and  is  an  unfailing  indication  of  advancing 
modern  civilization.1 

But  it  is  not  only,  nor  even  mainly,  in  the 
sphere  of  woman's  material  domestic  labors 

i  There  is,  indeed,  often  something  pathetic  in  the  attitude 
of  many  a  good  old  mother  of  the  race,  who  having  survived, 
here  and  there,  into  the  heart  of  our  modern  civilization,  is 
sorely  puzzled  by  the  change  in  woman's  duties  and  obliga- 
tions. She  may  be  found  looking  into  the  eyes  of  some  ancient 
crone,  who,  like  herself,  has  survived  from  a  previous  state  of 
civilization,  seeking  there  a  confirmation  of  a  view  of  life  of 
which  a  troublous  doubt  has  crept  even  into  her  own  soul. 
"I,"  she  cries,  "always  cured  my  own  hams,  and  knitted  my 
own  socks,  and  made  up  all  the  linen  by  hand.  We  always  did 
it  when  we  were  girls — but  now  my  daughters  object!"  And 
her  old  crone  answers  her:  "Yes,  we  did  it;  it's  the  right 
thing;  but  it's  so  expensive.  It's  so  much  cheaper  to  buy 
things  ready  made!"  And  they  shake  their  heads  and  go  their 
ways,  feeling  that  the  world  is  strangely  out  of  joint  when  duty 
seems  no  more  duty.  Such  women  are,  in  truth,  like  a  good 
old  mother  duck,  who,  having  for  years  led  her  ducklings  to 
the  same  pond,  when  that  pond  has  been  drained  and  nothing 
is  left  but  baked  mud,  will  still  persist  in  bringing  her  young- 
lings down  to  it,  and  walks  about  with  flapping  wings  and 
anxious  quack,  trying  to  induce  them  to  enter  it.  But  the 
ducklings,  with  fresh  young  instincts,  hear  far  off  the  delicious 
drippings  from  the  new  dam  which  has  been  built  higher  up 
to  catch  the  water,  and  they  smell  the  duckweed  and  the  long 
grass  that  is  growing  up  beside  it;  and  absolutely  refuse  to 
disport  themselves  on  the  baked  mud  and  to  pretend  to  seek 
for  worms  where  no  worms  are.  And  they  leave  the  ancient 
mother  quacking  beside  her  pond  and  set  out  to  seek  for  new 
pastures — perhaps  to  lose  themselves  upon  the  way?  perhaps 
to  find  them?  To  the  old  mother  one  is  inclined  to  say,  "Ah 

[49] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

that  change  has  touched  her  and  shrunk  her 
ancient  field  of  labor. 

Time  was,  when  the  woman  kept  her  chil- 
dren about  her  knees  till  adult  years  were 
reached.  Hers  was  the  training  and  influence 
which  shaped  them.  From  the  moment  when 
the  infant  first  lay  on  her  breast,  till  her 
daughters  left  her  for  marriage  and  her  sons 
went  to  take  share  in  man's  labor,  they  were 
continually  under  the  mother's  influence. 
To-day,  so  complex  have  become  even  the 
technical  and  simpler  branches  of  education, 
«o  mighty  and  inexorable  are  the  demands 
which  modern  civilization  makes  for  special- 
ized instruction  and  training  for  all  individuals 
who  are  to  survive  and  retain  their  usefulness 
under  modern  conditions,  that,  from  the 
earliest  years  of  its  life,  the  child  is  of  nec- 
essity largely  removed  from  the  hands  of  the 
mother,  and  placed  in  those  of  the  special- 
ized instructor.  Among  the  wealthier  classes, 
scarcely  is  the  infant  born  when  it  passes  into 

good  old  mother  duck,  can  you  not  see  the  world  has  changed? 
You  cannot  bring  the  water  back  into  the  dried-up  pond !  May- 
hap it  was  better  and  pleasanter  when  it  was  there,  but  it  has 
gone  for  ever;  and,  would  you  and  yours  swim  again,  it  must 
be  in  other  waters."  New  machinery,  new  duties. 

[50] 


PARASITISM 

the  hands  of  the  trained  nurse,  and  from  hers 
on  into  the  hands  of  the  qualified  teacher;  till, 
at  nine  or  ten,  the  son  in  certain  countries  of- 
ten leaves  his  home  forever  for  the  public 
school,  to  pass  on  to  the  college  and  university ; 
while  the  daughter,  in  the  hands  of  trained  in- 
structors and  dependents,  owes  in  the  major- 
ity of  cases  hardly  more  of  her  education  or  for- 
mation to  maternal  toil. 

Even  among  our  poorer  classes,  the  infant 
school,  and  the  public  school,  and  later  on  the 
necessity  for  manual  training,  take  the  son  and 
often  the  daughter  as  completely,  and  always 
increasingly  as  civilization  advances,  from  the 
mother's  control.  So  marked  has  this  change 
in  woman's  ancient  field  of  labor  become,  that 
a  woman  of  almost  any  class  may  have  borne 
many  children  and  yet  at  middle  age  be  found 
sitting  alone  in  an  empty  house,  all  her  off- 
spring gone  from  her  to  receive  training  and 
instruction  at  the  hands  of  others.  The  an- 
cient statement  that  the  training  and  educa- 
tion of  her  offspring  is  exclusively  the  duty  of 
the  mother,  however  true  it  may  have  been 
with  regard  to  a  remote  past,  has  become  an 
absolute  misstatement ;  and  the  woman  who 

[51] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

should  at  the  present  day  insist  on  entirely 
educating  her  own  offspring  would,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  inflict  an  irreparable  injury 
on  them,  because  she  is  incompetent. 

But,  if  possible,  yet  more  deeply  and  rad- 
ically have  the  changes  of  modern  civilization 
touched  our  ancient  field  of  labor  in  another 
direction — in  that  very  portion  of  the  field 
of  human  labor  which  is  peculiarly  and  or- 
ganically ours,  and  which  can  never  be  wholly 
taken  from  us.  Here  the  shrinkage  has  been 
larger  than  in  any  other  direction,  and  touches 
us  as  women  more  vitally. 

Time  was,  and  still  is,  among  almost  all 
primitive  and  savage  folk,  when  the  first  and 
all-important  duty  of  the  female  to  her  society 
was  to  bear,  to  bear  much,  and  to  bear  un- 
ceasingly! On  her  adequate  and  persistent 
performance  of  this  passive  form  of  labor, 
and  on  her  successful  feeding  of  her  young 
from  her  own  breast,  depended,  not  merely 
the  welfare,  but  often  the  very  existence,  of 
her  tribe  or  nation.  Where,  as  is  the  case 
among  almost  all  barbarous  peoples,  the  rate 
of  infant  mortality  is  high;  where  the  unceas- 
ing casualties  resulting  from  war,  the  chase, 

[52] 


PARASITISM 

and  acts  of  personal  violence  tend  continually 
to  reduce  the  number  of  adult  males;  where, 
surgical  knowledge  being  still  in  its  infancy, 
most  wounds  are  fatal;  where,  above  all,  re- 
current pestilence  and  famine,  unfailing  if  of 
irregular  recurrence,  decimated  the  people,  it 
has  been  all  important  that  woman  should  em- 
ploy her  creative  power  to  its  very  uttermost 
limits  if  the  race  were  not  at  once  to  dwindle 
and  die  out.  "May  thy  wife's  womb  never 
cease  from  bearing,"  is  still  to-day  the  highest 
expression  of  good  will  on  the  part  of  a  native 
African  chief  to  his  departing  guest.  For, 
not  only  does  the  prolific  woman  in  the  primi- 
tive state  contribute  to  the  wealth  and  strength 
of  her  nation  as  a  whole,  but  to  that  of  her 
own  male  companion  and  of  her  family. 

Where  the  social  conditions  of  life  are  so 
simple  that,  in  addition  to  bearing  and  suck- 
ling the  child,  it  is  reared  and  nourished 
through  childhood  almost  entirely  through  the 
labor  and  care  of  the  mother,  requiring  no 
expenditure  of  tribal  or  family  wealth  on  its 
training  or  education,  its  value  as  an  adult 
enormously  outweighs,  both  to  the  state  and 
the  male,  the  trouble  and  expense  of  rearing 

[58] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

it,  which  falls  almost  entirely  on  the  individual 
woman  who  bears  it.  The  man  who  has 
twenty  children  to  become  warriors  and  la- 
borers is  by  so  much  the  richer  and  the  more 
powerful  than  he  who  has  but  one;  while  the 
state  whose  women  are  prolific  and  labor  for 
and  rear  their  children  stands  so  far  insured 
against  destruction.  Incessant  and  persistent 
child-bearing  is  thus  truly  the  highest  duty  and 
the  most  socially  esteemed  occupation  of  the 
primitive  woman,  equalling  fully  in  social  im- 
portance the  labor  of  the  man  as  hunter  and 
warrior. 

Even  under  those  conditions  of  civilization 
which  have  existed  in  the  centuries  dividing 
primitive  savagery  from  high  civilization,  the 
demand  for  continuous  unbroken  child-bear- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  woman  as  her  loftiest 
social  duty  has  generally  been  hardly  less 
imperious.  Throughout  the  Middle  Ages  of 
Europe,  and  down  almost  to  our  own  day, 
the  rate  of  infant  mortality  was  almost  as 
large  as  in  a  savage  state;  medical  ignorance 
destroyed  innumerable  lives;  antiseptic  sur- 
gery being  unknown,  serious  wounds  were  still 
almost  always  fatal;  in  the  low  state  of  san- 


PARASITISM 

itary  science,  plagues,  such  as  those  which  in 
the  reign  of  Justinian  swept  across  the  civi- 
lized world  from  India  to  Northern  Europe, 
well  nigh  depopulating  the  globe,  or  the  Black 
Death  of  1349,  which  in  England  alone  swept 
away  more  than  half  the  population  of  the 
island,  were  but  extreme  forms  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  population  going  on  continually  as  the 
result  of  zymotic  disease ;  while  wars  were  not 
merely  far  more  common  but,  owing  to  the 
famines  which  almost  invariably  followed 
them,  were  far  more  destructive  to  human  life 
than  in  our  own  days,  and  deaths  by  violence, 
whether  at  the  hands  of  the  state  or  as  the  re- 
sult of  personal  enmity,  were  of  daily  occur- 
rence in  all  lands.  Under  these  conditions 
abstinence  on  the  part  of  woman  from  incessant 
child-bearing  might  have  led  to  almost  the 
same  serious  diminution,  or  even  extinction  of 
her  people,  as  in  the  savage  state;  while  the 
very  existence  of  her  civilization  depended  on 
the  production  of  an  immense  number  of  in- 
dividuals as  beasts  of  burden,  without  the 
expenditure  of  whose  crude  muscular  force  in 
physical  labor  of  agriculture  and  manufacture, 
those  intermediate  civilizations  would,  in  the 

[56] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

absence  of  machinery,  have  been  impossible. 
Twenty  men  had  to  be  born,  fed  at  the  breast, 
and  reared  by  women  to  perform  the  crude 
brute  labor  which  is  performed  to-day  by  one 
small,  well-adjusted  steam  crane;  and  the  de- 
mand for  large  masses  of  human  creatures  as 
mere  reservoirs  of  motor  force  for  accomplish- 
ing the  simplest  processes  was  imperative.  So 
strong,  indeed,  was  the  consciousness  of  the 
importance  to  society  of  continuous  child-bear- 
ing on  the  part  of  woman,  that  as  late  as  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  Martin  Luther 
wrote:  "If  a  woman  becomes  weary  or  at  last 
dead  from  bearing,  that  matters  not;  let  her 
only  die  from  bearing,  she  is  there  to  do  it"; 
and  he  doubtless  gave  expression,  in  a  crude 
and  somewhat  brutal  form,  to  a  conviction 
common  to  the  bulk  of  his  contemporaries, 
both  male  and  female. 

To-day,  this  condition  has  almost  com- 
pletely reversed  itself. 

The  advance  of  science  and  the  amelioration 
of  the  physical  conditions  of  life  tend  rapidly 
toward  a  diminution  of  human  mortality. 
The  infant  death-rate  among  the  upper  classes 
in  modern  civilizations  has  fallen  by  more 

[56] 


PARASITISM 

than  one-half;  while  among  poorer  classes  it 
is  already,  though  slowly,  falling:  the  in- 
creased knowledge  of  the  laws  of  sanitation 
has  made  among  all  highly  civilized  peoples  the 
depopulation  by  plague  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  the  discoveries  of  the  next  twenty  or  thirty 
years  will  probably  do  away  for  ever  with  the 
danger  to  man  of  zymotic  disease.  Famines 
of  the  old  desolating  type  have  become  an 
impossibility  where  rapid  means  of  transporta- 
tion convey  the  superfluity  of  one  land  to 
supply  the  lack  of  another ;  and  war  and  deeds 
of  violence,  though  still  lingering  among  us, 
have  already  become  episodal  in  the  lives  of 
nations  as  of  individuals;  while  the  vast  ad- 
vances in  antiseptic  surgery  have  caused  even 
the  effects  of  wounds  and  dismemberments  to 
become  only  very  partially  fatal  to  human  life. 
All  these  changes  have  tended  to  diminish 
human  mortality  and  protract  human  life ;  and 
they  have  to-day  already  made  it  possible  for 
a  race  not  only  to  maintain  its  numbers,  but 
even  to  increase  them,  with  a  comparatively 
small  expenditure  of  woman's  vitality  in  the 
passive  labor  of  child-bearing. 

But  yet  more  seriously  has  the  demand  for 
[57] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

woman's  labor  as  child-bearer  been  diminished 
by  change  in  another  direction. 

Every  mechanical  invention  which  lessens 
the  necessity  for  rough,  untrained,  muscular, 
human  labor,  diminishes  also  the  social  de- 
mand upon  woman  as  the  producer  in  large 
masses  of  such  laborers.  Already  throughout 
the  modern  civilized  world  we  have  reached  a 
point  at  which  the  social  demand  is  not  merely 
for  human  creatures  in  the  bulk  for  use  as 
beasts  of  burden,  but,  rather,  and  only,  for 
such  human  creatures  as  shall  be  so  trained  and 
cultured  as  to  be  fitted  for  the  performance 
of  the  more  complex  duties  of  modern  life. 
Not,  now,  merely  for  many  men,  but,  rather, 
for  few  men,  and  those  few,  well-born  and  well- 
instructed,  is  the  modern  demand.  And  the 
woman  who  to-day  merely  produces  twelve 
children  and  suckles  them,  and  then  turns 
them  loose  on  her  society  and  family,  is  re- 
garded, and  rightly  so,  as  a  curse  and  down- 
draft,  and  not  the  productive  laborer,  of  her 
community.  Indeed,  so  difficult  and  expen- 
sive has  become  in  the  modern  world  the  rear- 
ing and  training  of  even  one  individual,  in  a 
manner  suited  to  fit  it  for  coping  with  the 

[58] 


PARASITISM 

complexities  and  difficulties  of  civilized  life, 
that,  to  the  family  as  well  as  to  the  state,  un- 
limited fecundity  on  the  part  of  the  female 
has  already,  in  most  cases,  become  an  irre- 
mediable evil.  It  is  thus  in  the  case  of  the 
artisan,  who  at  the  cost  of  immense  self- 
sacrifice  must  support  and  train  his  children 
till  their  twelfth  or  fourteenth  year,  if  they  are 
ever  to  become  even  skilled  manual  laborers, 
and  who  if  his  family  be  large  often  sinks 
beneath  the  burden,  allowing  his  offspring, 
untaught  and  untrained,  to  become  waste 
products  of  human  life.  So  with  the  pro- 
fessional man,  who  by  his  mental  toil  is  com- 
pelled to  support  and  educate,  at  immense 
expense,  his  sons  till  they  are  twenty  or  older, 
and  to  sustain  his  daughters,  often  throughout 
their  whole  lives  should  they  not  marry,  and  to 
whom  a  large  family  proves  often  no  less 
disastrous;  while  the  state  whose  women  pro- 
duce recklessly  large  masses  of  individuals  in 
excess  of  those  for  whom  they  can  provide 
instruction  and  nourishment  is  a  state,  in  so 
far,  tending  toward  deterioration.  The  com- 
mandment to  the  modern  woman  is  now  not 
simply  "Thou  shalt  bear,"  but  rather,  "Thou 

[59] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

shalt  not  bear  in  excess  of  thy  power  to  rear 
and  train  satisfactorily";  and  the  woman 
who  should  to-day  appear  at  the  door  of  a 
workhouse  or  the  tribunal  of  the  poor-law 
guardians  followed  by  her  twelve  infants,  de- 
manding honorable  sustenance  for  them  and 
herself  in  return  for  the  labor  she  had  under- 
gone in  producing  them,  would  meet  with  but 
short  shrift.  And  the  modern  man  who  on  his 
wedding-day  should  be  greeted  with  the  an- 
cient good  wish,  that  he  might  become  the 
father  of  twenty  sons  and  twenty  daughters, 
would  regard  it  as  a  malediction  rather  than 
a  blessing.  It  is  certain  that  the  time  is  now 
rapidly  approaching  when  child-bearing  will 
be  regarded  rather  as  a  lofty  privilege,  per- 
missible only  to  those  who  have  shown  their 
power  rightly  to  train  and  provide  for  their 
offspring,  than  a  labor  which  in  itself,  and  un- 
der whatever  conditions  performed,  is  benefi- 
cial to  society.1 

1  The  difference  between  the  primitive  and  modern  view  on 
this  matter  is  aptly  and  quaintly  illustrated  by  two  incidents. 
Seeing  a  certain  Bantu  woman  who  appeared  better  cared  for, 
less  hard  worked,  and  happier  than  the  mass  of  her  companions, 
we  made  inquiry,  and  found  that  she  had  two  childless  brothers ; 
she  herself  had  not  married,  but  had  borne  by  different  men 

[60] 


PARASITISM 

Further,  owing  partly  to  the  diminished 
demand  for  child-bearing,  rising  from  the 
extreme  difficulty  and  expense  of  rearing  and 
education,  and  to  many  other  complex  social 
causes,  to  which  we  shall  return  later,  millions 
of  women  in  our  modern  societies  are  so  placed 
as  to  be  absolutely  compelled  to  go  through 
life  not  merely  childless,  but  without  sex  rela- 
tionship in  any  form  whatever;  while  another 
mighty  army  of  women  is  reduced  by  the  dis- 
locations of  our  civilization  to  accepting  sexual 
relationships  which  almost  negate  child-bear- 

fourteen  children,  all  of  whom  when  grown  she  had  given  to 
her  brothers.  "They  are  fond  of  me  because  I  have  given 
them  so  many  children,  therefore  I  have  not  to  work  like  the 
other  women;  and  my  brothers  give  me  plenty  of  mealies  and 
milk,"  she  replied,  complacently,  when  questioned,  "and  our 
family  will  not  die  out."  And  this  person,  whose  conduct  was 
so  emphatically  anti-social  on  all  sides  when  viewed  from  the 
modern  standpoint,  was  evidently  regarded  as  pre-eminently 
of  value  to  her  family  and  to  society  because  of  her  mere 
fecundity. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  few  weeks  back  appeared  an  account 
in  the  London  papers  of  an  individual  who,  taken  up  at  the 
East  End  for  some  brutal  offense,  blubbered  out  in  court  that 
she  was  the  mother  of  twenty  children.  "You  should  be 
ashamed  of  yourself!"  responded  the  magistrate;  "a  woman 
capable  of  such  conduct  would  be  capable  of  doing  anything!" 
and  the  fine  was  remorselessly  inflicted.  Undoubtedly,  if  some- 
what brutally,  the  magistrate  yet  gave  true  voice  to  the  mod- 
ern view  on  the  subject  of  excessive  and  reckless  child-bearing. 

[61] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

ing,  and  whose  only  product  is  physical  and 
moral  disease. 

Thus,  it  has  come  to  pass  that  vast  numbers 
of  us  are,  by  modern  social  conditions,  pro- 
hibited from  child-bearing  at  all,  and  that  even 
those  among  us  who  are  child-bearers  are  re- 
quired, in  proportion  as  the  class  or  race  to 
which  we  belong  stands  high  in  the  scale  of 
civilization,  to  produce  in  most  cases  a  limited 
number  of  offspring;  so  that,  even  for  these 
of  us,  child-bearing  and  suckling,  instead  of 
filling  the  entire  circle  of  female  life  from  the- 
first  appearance  of  puberty  to  the  end  of 
middle  age,  becomes  an  episodal  occupation, 
employing  from  three  or  four  to  ten  or  twenty 
of  the  threescore-and-ten-years  which  are  al- 
lotted to  human  life.  In  such  societies  the 
statement  (so  profoundly  true  when  made 
with  regard  to  most  savage  societies,  and  even 
largely  true  with  regard  to  those  in  the  inter- 
mediate stages  of  civilization)  that  the  main 
and  continuous  occupation  of  all  women  from 
puberty  to  age  is  the  bearing  and  suckling  of 
children,  and  that  this  occupation  must  fully 
satisfy  all  her  needs  for  social  labor  and  ac- 

[62] 


PARASITISM 

tivity,  becomes  an  antiquated  and  unmitigated 
misstatement. 

Not  only  are  millions  of  our  women  pre- 
cluded from  ever  bearing  a  child,  but  for  those 
of  us  who  do  bear  the  demand  is  ever  increas- 
ingly in  civilized  societies  coupled  with  the 
condition  that  if  we  would  act  socially  we  must 
restrict  our  powers.1 

1  As  regards  modern  civilized  nations,  we  find  that  those 
whose  birth-rate  is  the  highest  per  woman  are  by  no  means  the 
happiest,  most  enlightened,  or  powerful;  nor  do  we  even  find 
that  the  population  always  increases  in  proportion  to  the  births. 
France,  which  in  many  respects  leads  in  the  van  of  civilization, 
has  one  of  the  lowest  birth-rates  per  woman  in  Europe;  and 
among  the  free  and  enlightened  population  of  Switzerland 
and  Scandinavia  the  birth-rate  is  often  exceedingly  low;  while 
Ireland,  one  of  the  most  unhappy  and  weak  of  European  na- 
tions, had  long  one  of  the  highest  birth-rates,  without  any  pro- 
portional increase  in  population  or  power.  With  regard  to 
the  different  classes  in  one  community,  the  same  effect  is  ob- 
servable. 

The  birth-rate  per  woman  is  higher  among  the  lowest  and 
most  ignorant  classes  in  the  back  slums  of  our  great  cities 
than  among  the  women  of  the  upper  and  cultured  classes, 
mainly  because  the  age  at  which  marriages  are  contracted  always 
tends  to  become  higher  as  the  culture  and  intelligence  of  indi- 
viduals rises,  but  also  because  of  the  regulation  of  the  number 
of  births  after  marriage.  Yet  the  number  of  children  reared 
to  adult  years  among  the  more  intelligent  classes  probably 
equals  or  exceeds  those  of  the  lowest,  owing  to  the  high  rate  of 
infant  mortality  where  births  are  excessive. 

[63] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

Looking  round,  then,  with  the  uttermost 
impartiality  we  can  command,  on  the  entire 
field  of  woman's  ancient  and  traditional  la- 
bors, we  find  that  fully  three-fourths  of  it  have 
shrunk  away  for  ever,  and  that  the  remaining 
fourth  still  tends  to  shrink. 

It  is  this  great  fact,  so  often  and  so  com- 
pletely overlooked,  which  lies  as  the  propelling 
force  behind  that  vast  and  restless  "Woman's 
Movement"  which  marks  our  day.  It  is 
this  fact,  whether  clearly  and  intellectually 
grasped,  or,  as  is  more  often  the  case,  vaguely 
and  painfully  felt.,  which  awakes  in  the  hearts 
of  the  ablest  modern  European  women  their 
passionate,  and  at  times  it  would  seem  almost 
incoherent,  cry  for  new  forms  of  labor  and 
new  fields  for  the  exercise  of  their  powers. 

Thrown  into  strict  logical  form,  our  demand 
is  this:  We  do  not  ask  that  the  wheels  of 
time  should  reverse  themselves,  or  the  stream 
of  life  flow  backward.  We  do  not  ask  that 
our  ancient  spinning-wheels  be  again  resus- 
citated and  placed  in  our  hands;  we  do  not 
demand  that  our  old  grindstones  and  hoes  be 
returned  to  us,  or  that  man  should  again  be- 
take himself  entirely  to  his  ancient  province 

[64] 


PARASITISM 

of  war  and  the  chase,  leaving  to  us  all  domes- 
tic and  civil  labor.  We  do  not  even  demand 
that  society  shall  immediately  so  reconstruct 
itself  that  every  woman  may  be  again  a  child- 
bearer  (deep  and  overmastering  as  lies  the 
hunger  for  motherhood  in  every  virile  woman's 
heart!) ;  neither  do  we  demand  that  the  chil- 
dren whom  we  bear  shall  again  be  put  ex- 
clusively into  our  hands  to  train.  This,  we 
know,  cannot  be.  The  past  material  condi- 
tions of  life  have  gone  for  ever ;  no  will  of  man 
can  recall  them,  but  this  is  our  demand:  We 
demand  that,  in  that  strange  new  world  that 
is  arising  alike  upon  the  man  and  the  woman, 
where  nothing  is  as  it  was,  and  all  things  are 
assuming  new  shapes  and  relations,  that  in  this 
new  world  we  also  shall  have  our  share  of 
honored  and  socially  useful  human  toil,  our 
full  half  of  the  labor  of  the  Children  of 
Woman.  We  demand  nothing  more  than 
this,  and  we  will  take  nothing  less.  This  is 
our  "WOMAN'S  RIGHT!" 


[65] 


PARASITISM 

(Continued) 


CHAPTER  II 

PARASITISM   (continued) 

Is  it  to  be,  that,  in  the  future,  machinery 
and  the  captive  motor-forces  of  nature  are 
largely  to  take  the  place  of  human  hand  and 
foot  in  the  labor  of  clothing  and  feeding  the 
nations;  are  these  branches  of  industry  to  be 
no  longer  domestic  labors? — then,  we  demand 
that  in  the  factory,  the  warehouse,  and  the  field, 
wherever  machinery  has  usurped  our  ancient 
labor-ground,  we  also  should  have  our  place, 
as  guiders,  controllers,  and  possessors.  Is 
child-bearing  to  become  the  labor  of  but  a  por- 
tion of  our  sex? — then  we  demand  for  those 
among  us  who  are  allowed  to  take  no  share  in 
it,  compensatory  and  equally  honorable  and 
important  fields  of  social  toil.  Is  the  training 
of  human  creatures  to  become  a  yet  more  and 
more  onerous  and  laborious  occupation,  their 
education  and  culture  to  become  increasingly 
a  high  art,  complex  and  scientific? — if  so, 

[69] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

then,  we  demand  that  high  and  complex  cul- 
ture and  training  which  shall  fit  us  for  in- 
structing the  race  which  we  bring  into  the 
world.  Is  the  demand  for  child-bearing  to 
become  so  diminished  that,  even  in  the  lives  of 
those  among  us  who  are  child-bearers,  it  shall 
fill  no  more  than  half  a  dozen  years  out  of  the 
three-score-and-ten  of  human  life? — then  we 
demand  that  an  additional  outlet  be  ours 
which  shall  fill  up  with  dignity  and  value  the 
tale  of  the  years  not  so  employed.  Is  intel- 
lectual labor  to  take  ever  and  increasingly  the 
place  of  crude  muscular  exertion  in  the  labor 
of  life? — then  we  demand  for  ourselves  that 
culture  and  the  freedom  of  action  which  alone 
can  yield  us  the  knowledge  of  life  and  the 
intellectual  vigor  and  strength  which  will  en- 
able us  to  undertake  the  same  share  of  mental 
which  we  have  borne  in  the  past  in  physical 
labors  of  life.  Are  the  rulers  of  the  race  to 
be  no  more  its  kings  and  queens,  but  the  mass 
of  the  peoples? — then  we,  one-half  of  the 
nations,  demand  our  full  queens'  share  in  the 
duties  and  labors  of  government  and  legisla- 
tion. Slowly  but  determinately,  as  the  old 

[70] 


PARASITISM 

fields  of  labor  close  up  and  are  submerged  be- 
hind us,  we  demand  entrance  into  the  new. 

We  make  this  demand,  not  for  our  own 
sake  alone,  but  for  the  succor  of  the  race. 

A  horseman,  riding  along  on  a  dark  night  in 
an  unknown  land,  may  chance  to  feel  his  horse 
start  beneath  him;  rearing,  it  may  almost  hurl 
him  to  the  earth :  in  the  darkness  he  may  curse 
his  beast,  and  believe  its  aim  is  simply  to  cast 
him  off,  and  free  itself  for  ever  of  its  burden. 
But  when  the  morning  dawns  and  lights  the 
hills  and  valleys  he  has  traveled,  looking  back- 
ward, he  may  perceive  that  the  spot  where  his 
beast  reared,  planting  its  feet  into  the  earth, 
and  where  it  refused  to  move  farther  on  the 
old  road,  was  indeed  the  edge  of  a  mighty 
precipice,  down  which  one  step  more  would 
have  precipitated  both  horse  and  rider.  And 
he  may  then  see  that  it  was  an  instinct  wiser 
than  his  own  which  led  his  creature,  though 
in  the  dark,  to  leap  backward,  seeking  a  new 
path  along  which  both  might  travel.1 

In  the  confusion  and  darkness  of  the  pres- 

1  Is  it  not  recorded  that  Balaam's  ass  on  which  he  rode  saw 
the  angel  with  flaming  sword,  but  Balaam  saw  it  not ! 

[71] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

ent,  it  may  well  seem  to  some  that  woman,  in 
her  desire  to  seek  for  new  paths  of  labor  and 
employment,  is  guided  only  by  an  irresponsi- 
ble impulse ;  or  that  she  seeks  selfishly  only  her 
own  good,  at  the  cost  of  that  of  the  race,  which 
she  has  so  long  and  faithfully  borne  onward. 
But,  when  a  clearer  future  shall  have  arisen 
and  the  obscuring  mists  of  the  present  have 
been  dissipated,  may  it  not  then  be  clearly 
manifest  that  not  for  herself  alone,  but  for  her 
entire  race,  has  woman  sought  her  new  paths? 

For  let  it  be  noted  exactly  what  our  position 
is,  who  to-day,  as  women,  are  demanding  new 
fields  of  labor  and  a  reconstruction  of  our  rela- 
tionship with  life. 

It  is  often  said  that  the  labor  problem  before 
the  modern  woman  and  that  before  the  unem- 
ployed or  partially  or  almost  uselessly  em- 
ployed male,  are  absolutely  identical ;  and  that 
therefore,  when  the  male  labor  problem  of  our 
age  solves  itself,  that  of  the  woman  will  of 
necessity  have  met  its  solution  also. 

This  statement,  with  a  certain  specious 
semblance  of  truth,  is  yet,  we  believe,  radically 
and  fundamentally  false.  It  is  true  that  both 
the  male  and  the  female  problems  of  our  age 

[72] 


PARASITISM 

have  taken  their  rise  largely  in  the  same  rapid 
material  changes  which  during  the  last  cen- 
turies, and  more  especially  the  last  ninety 
years,  have  altered  the  face  of  the  human 
world.  Both  men  and  women  have  been 
robbed  by  those  changes  of  their  ancient  re- 
munerative fields  of  social  work:  here  the  re- 
semblance stops.  The  male,  from  whom  the 
changes  of  modern  civilization  have  taken  his 
ancient  field  of  labor,  has  but  one  choice  before 
him:  he  must  find  new  fields  of  labor,  or  he 
must  perish.  Society  will  not  ultimately  sup- 
port him  in  an  absolutely  quiescent  and  almost 
useless  condition.  If  he  does  not  vigorously 
exert  himself  in  some  direction  or  other  (the 
direction  may  even  be  predatory)  he  must 
ultimately  be  annihilated.  Individual  drones, 
both  among  the  wealthiest  and  the  poorest 
classes  (millionaires'  sons,  dukes,  or  tramps), 
may  in  isolated  cases  be  preserved,  and  allowed 
to  reproduce  themselves  without  any  exertion 
or  activity  of  mind  or  body,  but  a  vast  body 
of  males  who,  having  lost  their  old  forms  of 
social  employment,  should  refuse  in  any  way 
to  exert  themselves  or  seek  for  new,  would  at 
no  great  length  of  time  become  extinct. 

[73] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

There  never  has  been,  and  as  far  as  can  be 
seen,  there  never  will  be,  a  time  when  the 
majority  of  the  males  in  any  society  will  be 
supported  by  the  rest  of  the  males  in  a  condi- 
tion of  perfect  mental  and  physical  inactivity. 
"Find  labor  or  die"  is  the  choice  ultimately 
put  before  the  human  male  to-day,  as  in  the 
past;  and  this  constitutes  his  labor  problem.1 
The  labor  of  the  man  may  not  always  be 
useful  in  the  highest  sense  to  his  society,  or  it 
may  even  be  distinctly  harmful  and  antisocial, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  robber-barons  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  who  h'ved  by  capturing  and  de- 
spoiling all  who  passed  by  their  castles;  or  as 
in  the  case  of  the  share  speculators,  stock- 

i  The  nearest  approach  to  complete  parasitism  on  the  part  of 
a  vast  body  of  males  occurred,  perhaps,  in  ancient  Rome  at  the 
time  of  the  decay  and  downfall  of  the  Empire,  when  the  bulk 
of  the  population,  male  as  well  as  female,  was  fed  on  imported 
corn,  wine,  and  oil,  and  supplied  even  with  entertainment,  al- 
most entirely  without  exertion  or  labor  of  any  kind;  but  this 
condition  was  of  short  duration,  and  speedily  contributed  to 
the  downfall  of  the  diseased  Empire  itself.  Among  the  wealthy 
and  so-called  upper  classes,  the  males  of  various  aristocrats 
have  frequently  tended  to  become  completely  parasitic  after 
a  lapse  of  time,  but  such  a  condition  has  always  been  met 
by  a  short  and  sharp  remedy;  and  the  class  has  fallen,  or  be- 
come extinct  The  condition  of  the  males  of  the  upper  classes 
in  France  before  the  Revolution  affords  an  interesting  illustra- 
tion of  this  point. 

[74] 


PARASITISM 

jobbers,  ring-and-corner  capitalists,  and  mo- 
nopolists of  the  present  day,  who  feed  upon 
the  productive  labors  of  society  without  con- 
tributing anything  to  its  welfare.  But  even 
males  so  occupied  are  compelled  to  expend  a 
vast  amount  of  energy  and  even  a  low  intel- 
ligence in  their  callings;  and,  however  injuri- 
ous to  their  societies,  they  run  no  personal  risk 
of  handing  down  effete  and  enervated  consti- 
tutions to  their  race.  Whether  beneficially  or 
unbeneficially,  the  human  male  must,  generally 
speaking,  employ  his  intellect,  or  his  muscle, 
or  die. 

The  position  of  the  unemployed  modern 
female  is  one  wholly  different.  The  choice 
before  her,  as  her  ancient  fields  of  domestic 
labor  slip  from  her,  is  not  generally  or  often 
at  the  present  day  the  choice  between  finding 
new  fields  of  labor,  or  death ;  but  one  far  more 
serious  in  its  ultimate  reaction  on  humanity  as 
a  whole — it  is  the  choice  between  finding  new 
forms  of  labor  or  sinking  slowly  into  a  con- 
dition of  more  or  less  complete  and  passive 
sea:- parasitism/ l 

1  It  is   not   without  profound   interest  to  note  the   varying 
phenomena  of  sex-parasitism  as  they  present  themselves  in  the 

[75] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

Again  and  again  in  the  history  of  the  past, 
when  among  human  creatures  a  certain  stage 
of  material  civilization  has  been  reached,  a 
curious  tendency  has  manifested  itself  for  the 

animal  world,  both  in  the  male  and  in  the  female  form. 
Though  among  the  greater  number  of  species  in  the  animal 
world  the  female  form  is  larger  and  more  powerful  rather  than 
the  male  (e.g.,  among  birds  of  prey,  such  as  eagles,  falcons, 
vultures,  &c.,  and  among  fishes,  insects,  &c.),  yet  sex-parasit- 
ism appears  among  both  sex  forms.  In  certain  sea-creatures, 
for  example,  the  female  carries  about  in  the  folds  of  her  cover- 
ing three  or  four  minute  and  quite  inactive  males,  who  are  en- 
tirely passive  and  dependent  upon  her. 

Among  termites,  on  the  other  hand,  the  female  has  so  far  de- 
generated that  she  has  entirely  lost  the  power  of  locomotion ;  she 
can  no  longer  provide  herself  or  her  offspring  with  nourishment, 
or  defend  or  even  clean  herself;  she  has  become  a  mere  passive, 
distended,  bag  of  eggs,  without  intelligence  or  activity,  she  and 
her  offspring  existing  through  the  exertions  of  the  slaves  and 
workers  of  the  community.  Among  other  insects,  such,  for 
example,  as  certain  ticks,  another  form  of  female  parasitism 
prevails,  and  while  the  male  remains  a  complex,  highly  active, 
and  winged  creature,  the  female,  fastening  herself  by  the  head 
into  the  flesh  of  some  living  animal  and  sucking  its  blood,  has 
lost  wings  and  all  activity,  and  power  of  locomotion,  having 
become  a  mere  distended  bladder,  which  when  filled  with  eggs 
bursts  and  ends  a  parasitic  existence  which  has  hardly  been 
life.  It  is  not  impossible,  and  it  appears,  indeed,  highly  prob- 
able, that  it  has  been  this  degeneration  and  parasitism  on  the 
part  of  the  female  which  has  set  its  limitation  to  the  evolution 
of  ants,  creatures  which,  having  reached  a  point  of  mental 
development  in  some  respects  almost  as  high  as  that  of  man, 
have  yet  become  curiously  and  immovably  arrested.  The  whole 
question  of  sex-parasitism  among  the  lower  animals  is  one 

[76] 


PARASITISM 

human  female  to  become  more  or  less  parasitic ; 
social  conditions  tend  to  rob  her  of  all  forms 
of  active  conscious  social  labor,  and  to  reduce 
her,  like  the  field-bug,  to  the  passive  exercise 
of  her  sex  functions  alone.  And  the  result 
of  this  parasitism  has  invariably  been  the  decay 
in  vitality  and  intelligence  of  the  female,  fol- 
lowed after  a  longer  or  shorter  period  by  that 
of  her  male  descendants  and  her  entire  society. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  history  of  the  past 
the  dangers  of  the  sex-parasitism  have  never 
threatened  more  than  a  small  section  of  the 
females  of  the  human  race,  those  exclusively 
of  some  dominant  race  or  class;  the  mass  of 
women  beneath  them  being  still  compelled  to 
assume  many  forms  of  strenuous  activity.  It 
is  at  the  present  day,  and  under  the  peculiar 
conditions  of  our  modern  civilization,  that  for 
the  first  time  sex-parasitism  has  become  a 
danger,  more  or  less  remote,  to  the  mass  of 
civilized  women,  perhaps  ultimately  to  all. 

In  the  very  early  stages  of  human  growth, 
the  sexual  parasitism  and  degeneration  of  the 
female  formed  no  possible  source  of  social 

throwing  suggestive  and  instructive  side-lights  on  human  social 
problems,  but  is  too  extensive  to  be  here  entered  on. 

[77] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

danger.  Where  the  conditions  of  life  ren- 
dered it  inevitable  that  all  the  labor  of  a  com- 
munity should  be  performed  by  the  members 
of  that  community  for  themselves,  without  the 
assistance  of  slaves  or  machinery,  the  tendency 
has  always  been  rather  to  throw  an  excessive 
amount  of  social  labor  on  the  female.  Under 
no  conditions,  at  no  time,  in  no  place,  in  the 
history  of  the  world  have  the  males  of  any 
period,  of  any  nation,  or  of  any  class,  shown 
the  slightest  inclination  to  allow  their  own 
females  to  become  inactive  or  parasitic,  so  long 
as  the  actual  muscular  labor  of  feeding  and 
clothing  them  would  in  that  case  have  de- 
volved upon  themselves! 

The  parasitism  of  the  human  female  be- 
comes a  possibility  only  when  a  point  in 
civilization  is  reached  (such  as  that  which  was 
attained  in  the  ancient  civilizations  of  Greece, 
Rome,  Persia,  Assyria,  India,  and  such  as 
to-day  exists  in  many  of  the  civilizations  of  the 
East,  such  as  those  of  China  and  Turkey), 
when,  owing  to  the  extensive  employment  of 
the  labor  of  slaves,  or  of  subject  races  or 
classes,  the  dominant  race  or  class  has  become  so 
liberally  supplied  with  the  material  goods  of 

[78] 


PARASITISM 

life  that  mere  physical  toil  on  the  part  of  its 
own  female  members  has  become  unnecessary. 
It  is  when  this  point  has  been  reached,  and 
never  before,  that  the  symptoms  of  female 
parasitism  have  in  the  past  almost  invariably 
tended  to  manifest  themselves,  and  have  be- 
come a  social  danger.  The  males  of  the 
dominant  class  have  almost  always  contrived 
to  absorb  to  themselves  the  new  intellectual 
occupations,  which  the  absence  of  necessity  for 
the  old  forms  of  physical  toil  made  possible  in 
their  societies;  and  the  females  of  the  domi- 
nant class  or  race,  for  whose  muscular  labors 
there  was  now  also  no  longer  any  need,  not 
succeeding  in  grasping  or  attaining  to  these 
new  forms  of  labor,  have  sunk  into  a  state  in 
which,  performing  no  species  of  active  social 
duty,  they  have  existed  through  the  passive 
performance  of  sexual  functions  alone,  with 
how  much  or  how  little  of  discontent  will  now 
never  be  known,  since  no  literary  record  has 
been  made  by  the  woman  of  the  past,  of  her 
desires  or  sorrows.  Therein  place^  of  the 

by 


her  toil,  has  come  the  effete  wife,  concubine 
or  prostitute,  clad  in  fine  raiment,  the  work 

[79] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 


,  the 

result  of  others*  toiL  waited  on  and  tended  by 
theJahar-oi-other£.  The  need  for  her  physical 
labor  having  gone,  and  mental  industry  not 
having  taken  its  place,  she  bedecked  and 
scented  her  person,  or  had  it  bedecked  and 
scented  for  her,  she  lay  upon  her  sofa,  or  drove 
or  was  carried  out  in  her  vehicle,  and,  loaded 
with  jewels,  she  sought  by  dissipations  and 
amusements  to  fill  up  the  inordinate  blank  left 
by  the  lack  of  productive  activity.  And  the 
hand  whitened  and  frame  softened,  till,  at 
last,  the  very  duties  of  motherhood,  which 
were  all  the  constitution  of  her  life  left  her, 
became  distasteful,  and,  from  the  instant  when 
her  infant  came  damp  from  her  womb,  it 
passed  into  the  hands  of  others,  to  be  tended 
and  reared  by  them;  and  from  youth  to  age 
her  offspring  often  owed  nothing  to  her  per- 
sonal toil.  In  many  cases  so  complete  was 
her  enervation,  that  at  last  the  very  joy  of 
giving  life,  the  glory  and  beatitude  of  a  virile 
womanhood,  became  distasteful;  and  she 
sought  to  evade  it,  not  because  of  its  inter- 
ference with  more  imperious  duties  to  those 
already  born  of  her,  or  to  her  society,  but  be- 

[80] 


PARASITISM 

cause  her  existence  of  inactivity  had  robbed 
her  of  all  joy  in  strenuous  exertion  and  en- 
durance in  any  form.  Ejnely  clad,  tenderly 
hrmg^fl,  lifp  hppamp  fnr  her  merely  the  grati- 
fication of  her  own  physical  and  sexual  appe- 
tites, and  the  appetites  of  the  male,  through 
thestimulation  of  which  she  could  maintain 


herselJJ—  -Aid»  whether  as  kept  wife,  ^ 
mistress,  or  prostitute,  she  contributed  nothing 
to  the  active  and  sustaining  labors  of  her 
society.  She  had  attained  to  the  full  develop- 
ment of  that  type  which,  whether  in  modern 
Paris  or  New  York  or  London,  or  in  ancient 
Greece,  Assyria,  or  Rome,  is  essentially  one  in 
its  features,  its  nature,  and  its  results.  She 
was  the  "fine  lady,"  the  human  female  para- 
site —  the  most  deadly  microbe  which  can  make 
its  appearance  on  the  surface  of  any  social 
organism.1 

i  The_relation  of  female  jBirngjttom  gfn«"'ti|1y  \n  ^r  p^wiiiar 
phenomenon  of  j>rostitution_jsjbuidamental.  Prostitution  can 
never  be  adequately  dealt  with,  either  from  the  moral  or  the 
scientific  standpoint,  unless  its  relation  to  the  general  phe- 
nomenon of  female  parasitism  be  fully  recognized.  It  is  the 
failure  to  do  this  which  leaves  so  painful  a  sense  of  abortion 
on  the  mind,  after  listening  to  most  modern  utterances  on  the 
question,  whether  made  from  the  emotional  platform  of  the 
moral  reformer,  or  the  intellectual  platform  of  the  would-be 

[81] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

Wherever  in  the  history  of  the  past  this  type 
has  reached  its  full  development  and  has  com- 
prised the  bulk  of  the  females  belonging  to  any 
dominant  class  or  race,  it  has  heralded  its 
decay.  In  Assyria,  Greece,  Rome,  Persia,  as 
in  Turkey  to-day,  the  same  material  conditions 
have  produced  the  same  social  disease  among 
wealthy  and  dominant  races;  and  again  and 
again  when  the  nation  so  affected  has  come 
into  contact  with  nations  more  healthily  con- 
stituted, this  diseased  condition  has  contri- 
buted to  its  destruction. 

In  ancient  Greece,  in  its  superb  and  virile 
youth,  its  womanhood  was  richly  and  even 
heavily  endowed  with  duties  and  occupations. 
Not  the  mass  of  the  women  alone,  but  the 
king's  wife  and  the  prince's  daughter  do  we 
find  going  to  the  well  to  bear  water,  cleansing 
the  household  linen  in  the  streams,  feeding  and 
doctoring  their  households,  manufacturing  the 
clothing  of  their  race,  and  performing  even  a 
share  of  the  highest  social  functions  as  priest- 
esses and  prophetesses.  It  was  from  the 

scientist.  We  are  left  with  a  feeling  that  the  matter  has  been 
handled  but  not  dealt  with:  that  the  knife  has  not  reached 
the  -core. 


PARASITISM 

bodies  of  such  women  as  these  that  sprang 
that  race  of  heroes,  thinkers,  and  artists  who 
laid  the  foundations  of  Grecian  greatness. 
These  females  underlay  their  society  as  the 
solid  and  deeply  buried  foundations  underlay 
the  more  visible  and  ornate  portions  of  a  great 
temple,  making  its  structure  and  persistence 
possible.  In  Greece,  after  a  certain  lapse  of 
time,  these  virile  laboring  women  in  the  upper 
classes  were  to  be  found  no  more.  The  ac- 
cumulated wealth  of  the  dominant  race,  gath- 
ered through  the  labor  of  slaves  and  subject 
people,  had  so  immensely  increased  that  there 
was  no  longer  a  call  for  physical  labor  on  the 
part  of  the  dominant  womanhood;  immured 
within  the  walls  of  their  houses  as  wives  or 
mistresses,  waited  on  by  slaves  and  depend- 
ents, they  no  longer  sustained  by  their  exertion 
either  their  own  life  or  the  life  of  their  people. 
The  males  absorbed  the  intellectual  labors  of 
life;  slaves  and  dependents  the  physical.  For 
a  moment,  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  and  beginning 
of  the  fourth  century,  when  the  womanhood 
of  Greece  had  already  internally  decayed, 
there  was  indeed  a  brilliant  intellectual  efflor- 
escence among  her  males,  like  to  the  gorgeous 

[831 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

colors  in  the  sunset  sky  when  the  sun  is  already 
sinking;  but  the  heart  of  Greece  was  already 
rotting  and  her  vigor  failing.  Increasingly, 
division  and  dissimilarity  arose  between  male 
and  female,  as  the  male  advanced  in  culture 
and  entered  upon  new  fields  of  intellectual  toil 
while  the  female  sank  passively  backward  and 
lower  in  the  scale  of  life,  and  thus  was  made 
ultimately  a  chasm  which  even  sexual  love 
could  not  bridge.  The  abnormal  institution 
of  avowed  inter-male  sexual  relations  upon 
the  highest  plane  was  one  and  the  most  serious 
result  of  this  severance.  The  inevitable  and 
invincible  desire  of  all  highly  developed 
human  natures,  to  blend  with  their  sexual 
relationships  their  highest  intellectual  inter- 
ests and  sympathies,  could  find  no  satisfaction 
or  response  in  the  relationship  between  the 
immured,  comparatively  ignorant,  and  helpless 
females  of  the  upper  classes,  in  Greece,  and 
the  brilliant,  cultured,  and  many-sided  males 
who  formed  its  dominant  class  in  the  fifth  and 
fourth  centuries.  Man  turned  towards  man; 
and  parenthood,  the  divine  gift  of  imparting 
human  life,  was  severed  from  the  loftiest  and 
profoundest  phases  of  human  emotion:  Xan- 

[84] 


PARASITISM 

thippe  fretted  out  her  ignorant  and  miserable 
little  life  between  the  walls  of  her  house,  and 
Socrates  lay  in  the  Agora,  discussing  philoso- 
phy and  morals  with  Alcibiades ;  and  the  race 
decayed  at  its  core.1  Here  and  there  an 
Aspasia,  or  earlier  still  a  Sappho,  burst 
through  the  confining  bonds  of  woman's  en- 
vironment, and  with  the  force  of  irresistible 
genius  broke  triumphantly  into  new  fields  of 
action  and  powerful  mental  activity,  standing 
side  by  side  with  the  male ;  but  their  cases  were 
exceptional.  Had  they,  or  such  as  they,  been 
able  to  tread  down  a  pathway,  along  which  the 
mass  of  Grecian  women  might  have  followed 
them ;  had  it  been  possible  for  the  bulk  of  the 
women  of  the  dominant  race  in  Greece  at  the 
end  of  the  fifth  century  to  rise  from  their  con — 
dition  of  supine  inaction  and  ignorance  and 
to  have  taken  their  share  in  the  intellectual 
labors  and.  stern  activities  of  their  race,  Greece 
would  never  have  fallen,  as  she  fell  at  the  end 
of —the  fourth  century,  instantaneously  and 
completely,  as  ajrotten  puff-ball  falls  in  at  the 

iSee  Jowett's  translation  of  Plato's  "Banquet";  but  for  full 
light  on  this  important  question  the  entire  literature  of  Greece 
in  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  B.  c.  should  be  studied. 

[85] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

toucL-Of  ^healthy  finger;  first,  before^ the 
briberies  oiLEhilip,  and  then  yet  more  com- 
pletely before  the  arms  of  his  yet  more  warlike 
son,  wjw  was^  also  the  son  of  the  fierce, 
virile,  and  indomitable  Olympia.1  Nor  could 
she  have  been  swept  clean,  a  few  hundred 
years  later,  from  Thessaly  to  Sparta,  from 
Corinth  to  Ephesus,  her  temples  destroyed, 
her  effete  women  captured  by  the  hordes  of 
the  Goths — a  people  less  skilfully  armed  and 
less  civilized  than  the  descendants  of  the  race 
of  Pericles  and  Leonidas,  but  who  were  a 
branch  of  that  great  Teutonic  folk  whose 
monogamous  domestic  life  was  sound  at  the 
core,  and  whose  fearless,  laboring,  and  resolute 
women  yet  bore  for  the  men  they  followed  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  what  Spartan  women 
once  said  they  alone  bore — men. 

In  Rome,  in  the  days  of  her  virtue  and 
vigor,  the  Roman  matron  labored  mightily, 

i  Like  almost  all  men  remarkable  for  either  good  or  evil, 
Alexander  inherited  from  his  mother  his  most  notable  qualities 
— his  courage,  his  intellectual  activity,  and  an  ambition  indif- 
ferent to  any  means  that  made  for  his  own  end.  Fearless  in 
her  life,  she  fearlessly  met  death  "with  a  courage  worthy  of  her 
rank  and  domineering  character,  when  her  hour  of  retribution 
came";  and  Alexander  is  incomprehensible  till  we  recognize  him 
as  rising  from  the  womb  of  Olympia. 

[86] 


PARASITISM 

and  bore  on  her  shoulders  her  full  half  of  the 
social  burden,  though  her  sphere  of  labor  and 
influence  was  ever  somewhat  smaller  than  that 
of  the  Teutonic  sisterhood  whose  descendants 
were  finally  to  supplant  her  own.  From  the 
vestal  virgin  to  the  matron,  the  Roman  woman 
in  the  days  of  the  nation's  health  and  growth 
fulfilled  lofty  functions  and  bore  the  whole 
weight  of  domestic  toil.  From  the  days  of 
Lucretia,  the  great  Roman  dame  whom  we 
find  spinning  with  her  handmaidens  deep  into 
the  night,  and  whose  personal  dignity  was  so 
dear  to  her  that,  violated,  she  sought  only 
death,  to  those  of  the  mother  of  the  Gracchi, 
one  of  the  last  of  the  great  line,  we  find  every- 
where, erect,  laboring,  and  resolute,  the  Roman 
woman  who  gave  birth  to  the  men  who  built 
up  Roman  greatness.  A  few  centuries  later, 
and  Rome  also  had  reached  that  dangerous 
spot  in  the  order  of  social  change  which 
Greece  had  reached  centuries  before  her. 
Slave  labor  and  the  enjoyment  of  the  un- 
limited spoils  of  subject  races  had  done  away 
forever  with  the  demand  for  physical  labor 
on  the  part  of  the  members  of  the  dominant 
race.  Then  came  the  period  when  the  male 

[87] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

still  occupied  himself  with  the  duties  of  war 
and  government,  of  legislation  and  self -cul- 
ture; but  the  Roman  matron  had  already 
ceased  forever  from  her  toils.  Decked  in 
jewels  and  fine  clothing,  brought  at  the  cost  of 
infinite  human  labor  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth,  nourished  on  delicate  victuals  prepared 
by  others'  hands,  she  sought  now  only  with 
amusement  to  pass  away  a  life  that  no  longer 
offered  her  the  excitement  and  joy  of  active 
productive  exertion.  She  frequented  theaters 
or  baths,  or  reclined  on  her  sofa,  or  drove  in 
her  chariot;  and,  like,  more  modern  counter- 
parts, painted  herself,  wore  patches,  affected 
an  artistic  walk,  and  a  handshake  with  the 
elbow  raised  and  the  fingers  hanging  down. 
Her  children  were  reared  by  dependents;  and 
in  the  intellectual  labor  and  government  of  her 
age  she  took  small  part,  and  was  fit  to  take 
none.  There  were  not  wanting  writers  and 
thinkers  who  saw  clearly  the  end  to  which  the 
enervation  of  the  female  was  tending,  and 
who  were  not  sparing  in  their  denunciations. 
"Time  was,"  cries  one  Roman  writer  of  that 
age,  "when  the  matron  turned  the  spindle  with 
the  hand  and  kept  at  the  same  time  the  pot 

[88] 


PARASITISM 

in  her  eye  that  the  pottage  might  not  be 
singed,  but  now,"  he  adds  bitterly,  "when  the 
wife,  loaded  with  jewels,  reposes  among  pil- 
lows, or  seeks  the  dissipation  of  baths  and 
theaters,  all  things  go  downward  and  the  state 
decays."  Yet  neither  he  nor  that  large  body 
of  writers  and  thinkers  who  saw  the  condition 
towards  which  the  parasitism  of  woman  was 
tending  to  reduce  society,  preached  any  ade- 
quate remedy.1 

Thoughtful  men  sighed  over  the  present  and 
yearned  for  the  past,  nor  seem  to  have  per- 
ceived that  it  was  irrevocably  gone;  that  the 
Roman  lady  who,  with  a  hundred  servants 
standing  idle  about  her,  should,  in  imitation  of 
her  ancestress,  have  gone  out  with  her  pitcher 
on  her  head  to  draw  water  from  the  well,  while 
in  all  her  own  court-yards  pipe-led  streams 
gushed  forth,  would  have  acted  the  part  of  the 
pretender;  that  had  she  insisted  on  resusci- 
tating her  loom  and  had  she  sat  up  all  night  to 
spin,  she  could  never  have  produced  those 
fabrics  which  alone  her  household  demanded, 

i  Indeed,  must  not  the  protest  and  the  remedy  in  all  such 
cases,  if  they  are  to  be  of  any  avail,  take  their  rise  within  the 
diseased  class  itself? 

[89] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

and  would  have  been  but  a  puerile  actor;  that 
it  was  not  by  attempting  to  return  to  the  an- 
cient and  forever  closed  fields  of  toil,  but  by 
entering  upon  new,  that  she  could  alone  serve 
her  race  and  retain  her  own  dignity  and 
virility.  That  not  by  bearing  water  and  weav- 
ing linen,  but  by  so  training  and  disciplining 
herself  that  she  should  be  fitted  to  bear  her 
share  in  the  labor  necessary  to  the  just  and 
wise  guidance  of  a  great  empire,  and  be  cap- 
able of  training  a  race  of  men  adequate  to 
exercise  an  enlightened,  merciful,  and  benefi- 
cent rule  over  the  vast  masses  of  subject  peo- 
ple— that  so,  and  so  only,  could  she  fulfil 
her  duty  toward  the  new  society  about  her,  and 
bear  its  burden  together  with  man,  as  her  an- 
cestresses of  bygone  generations  had  borne  the 
burden  of  theirs. 

That  in  this  direction,  and  this  alone,  lay 
the  only  possible  remedy  for  the  evils  of 
woman's  condition,  was  a  conception  appar- 
ently grasped  by  none;  and  the  female  sank 
lower  and  lower,  till  the  image  of  the  parasitic 
woman  of  Rome  (with  a  rag  of  the  old  Roman 
intensity  left  even  in  her  degradation!)  — 
seeking  madly  by  pursuit  of  pleasure  and 

[90] 


PARASITISM 

sensuality  to  fill  the  void  left  by  the  lack  of 
honorable  activity ;  accepting  lust  in  the  place 
of  love,  ease  in  the  place  of  exertion,  and  an 
unlimited  consumption  in  the  place  of  pro- 
duction; too  enervated  at  last  to  care  even  to 
produce  offspring,  and  shrinking  from  every 
form  of  endurance — remains,  even  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  the  most  perfect,  and  therefore  the 
most  appalling  picture  of  the  parasite  female 
that  earth  has  produced — a  picture  only  less 
terrible  than  it  is  pathetic. 

We  recognize  that  it  was  inevitable  that 
this  womanhood — born  it  would  seem  from  its 
elevation  to  guide  and  enlighten  a  world,  and 
in  place  thereof  feeding  on  it — should  at  last 
have  given  birth  to  a  manhood  as  effete  as 
itself,  and  that  both  should  in  the  end  have 
been  swept  away  before  the  march  of  those 
Teutonic  folk,  whose  women  were  virile  and 
could  give  birth  to  men;  a  folk  among  whom 
the  woman  received  on  the  morning  of  her 
marriage,  from  the  man  who  was  to  be  her 
companion  through  life,  no  contemptible 
trinket  to  hang  about  her  throat  or  limbs,  but 
a  shield,  a  spear,  a  sword,  and  a  yoke  of  oxen, 
while  she  bestowed  on  him  in  return  a  suit  of 

[91] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

armor,  in  token  that  they  two  were  henceforth 
to  be  one  in  toil  and  in  the  facing  of  danger; 
that  she  too  should  dare  with  him  in  war  and 
suffer  with  him  in  peace.  Of  this  folk  another 
writer  tells  us  that  their  women  not  only  bore 
the  race  and  fed  it  at  their  breasts  without  the 
the  help  of  others'  hands,  but  that  they  under- 
took the  whole  management  of  house  and 
lands,  leaving  the  males  free  for  war  and 
chase;  of  them  Suetonius  tells  us  that  when 
Augustus  Caesar  demanded  hostages  from  a 
tribe,  he  took  women,  not  men,  because  he 
found  by  experience  that  the  women  were 
more  regarded  than  men;  and  of  them  Strabo 
says  that  so  highly  did  the  Germanic  races 
value  the  intellect  of  their  women  that  they 
regarded  them  as  inspired,  and  entered  into 
no  war  or  great  undertaking  without  their 
advice  and  counsel.  Among  the  Cimbrian 
women  who  accompanied  their  husbands  in  the 
invasion  of  Italy  were  certain  who  marched 
barefooted  in  the  midst  of  the  lines,  distin- 
guished by  their  white  hair  and  milk-white 
robes,  and  who  were  regarded  as  inspired,  and 
of  whom  Florus,  describing  an  early  Roman 
victory,  says,  "The  conflict  was  not  less  fierce 

[9*] 


PARASITISM 

and  obstinate  with  the  wives  of  the  van- 
quished; in  their  carts  and  wagons  they 
formed  a  line  of  battle,  and  from  their  elevated 
situation,  as  from  so  many  turrets,  annoyed 
the  Romans  with  their  poles  and  lances.1 
Their  death  was  as  glorious  as  their  mar- 
tial spirit.  Finding  that  all  was  lost,  they 
strangled  their  children,  and  either  destroyed 
themselves  in  one  scene  of  mutual  slaughter, 
or  with  the  sashes  that  bound  up  their  hair  sus- 
pended themselves  by  the  neck  to  the  boughs 
of  trees  or  the  tops  of  their  wagons."  It  is 
of  these  women  that  Valerius  Maximus  says 
that,  "If  the  gods  on  the  day  of  battle  had  in- 
spired the  men  with  equal  fortitude,  Marius 
would  never  have  boasted  of  his  Teutonic 
victory";  and  of  whom  Tacitus,  speaking  of 
those  women  who  accompanied  their  husbands 
to  war,  remarks,  "These  are  the  darling  wit- 
nesses of  his  conduct,  the  applauders  of  his 
valor,  at  once  beloved  and  valued.  The 
wounded  seek  their  mothers  and  their  wives; 
undismayed  at  the  sight,  the  women  count 
each  honorable  scar  and  suck  the  gushing 

»The  South  African  Boer  woman  after  two  thousand  years 
appears  not  wholly  to  have  forgotten  the  ancestral  tactics. 

[93] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

blood.  They  are  even  hardy  enough  to  mix 
with  the  combatants,  administering  refresh- 
ment and  exhorting  them  to  deeds  of  valor," 
and  adds  moreover  that,  "To  be  contented  with 
one  wife  was  peculiar  to  the  Germans;  while 
the  woman  was  contented  with  one  husband, 
as  with  one  life,  one  mind,  one  body." 

It  was  inevitable  that,  before  the  sons  of 
women  such  as  these,  the  sons  of  the  parasitic 
Roman  should  be  swept  from  existence,  as 
the  offspring  of  the  caged  canary  would  fall 
in  conflict  with  the  offspring  of  the  free. 

Again  and  again  with  wearisome  reitera- 
tion, the  same  story  repeats  itself.  Among 
the  Jews  in  the  days  of  their  health  and 
growth,  we  find  their  women  bearing  the  ma- 
jor weight  of  agricultural  and  domestic  toil, 
full  always  of  labor  and  care — from  Rachel, 
whom  Jacob  met  and  loved  as  she  watered  her 
father's  flocks,  to  Ruth,  the  ancestress  of  a 
line  of  kings  and  heroes,  whom  her  Boas  noted 
laboring  in  the  harvest-fields;  from  Sarah, 
kneading  and  baking  cakes  for  Abraham's 
prophetic  visitors,  to  Miriam,  prophetess  and 
singer,  and  Deborah,  who  judged  Israel  from 
beneath  her  palm-tree,  "and  the  land  had  rest 

[9*] 


PARASITISM 

for  forty  years."  Everywhere  the  ancient 
Jewish  woman  appears  an  active  sustaining 
power  among  her  people;  and  perhaps  the 
noblest  picture  of  the  laboring  woman  to  be 
found  in  any  literature  is  contained  in  the 
Jewish  writings,  indited  possibly  at  the  very 
time  when  the  laboring  woman  was  for  the 
first  time  tending  among  a  section  of  the  Jews 
to  become  a  thing  of  the  past;1  when  already 

1  The  picture  of  the  laboring  as  opposed  to  the  parasitic  ideal 
of  womanhood  appears  under  the  heading,  "The  words  of  King 
Lemuel;  the  oracle  which  his  mother  taught  him."  At  risk  of 
presenting  the  reader  with  that  with  which  he  is  already  pain- 
fully familiar,  we  here  transcribe  the  passage;  which,  allowing 
for  differences  in  material  and  intellectual  surroundings,  paints 
also  the  ideal  of  the  laboring  womanhood  of  the  present  and  of 
the  future: — 

"Her  price  is  far  above  rubies, 
The  heart  of  her  husband  trusteth  in  her, 
And  he  shall  have  no  lack  of  gain, 
She  doeth  him  good  and  not  evil 
All  the  days  of  her  life, 
She  seeketh  wool  and  flax, 
And  worketh  willingly  with  her  hand*, 
Sbe  is  like  the  merchant  ships; 
She  bringeth  her  food,  from  afar, 
She  riseth  up  while  it  is  yet  night; 
And  giveth  meat  to  her  household, 
And  their  task  to  her  maidens, 
She  considereth  a  tic  1.1.  and  buyeth  it; 
With  the  fruit  of  her  hands  she  planteth  a  vineyard. 
She  yirdeth  her  loins  with  itrength, 

[95] 


WOMAN    AND   LABOR 

Solomon,  with  his  seven  hundred  parasitic 
wives  and  three  hundred  parasitic  concubines, 
loomed  large  on  the  horizon  of  the  national 
life,  to  take  the  place  of  flock-tending  Rachel 
and  gleaning  Ruth,  and  to  produce  amid  their 
palaces  of  cedar  and  gold,  among  them  all, 

And  maketh  strong  Tier  arms. 

She  perceiveth  that  her  merchandise  is  profitable; 

Her  lamp  goeth  not  out  by  night, 

She  layeth  her  hands  to  the  distaff, 

And  her  hands  hold  the  spindle. 

She  spreadeth  out  her  hand  to  the  poor: 

Yea,  she  reacheth  forth  her  hands  to  the  needy, 

She  is  not  afraid  of  the  snow  for  her  household, 

For  all  her  household  are  clothed  with  scarlet. 

She  maketh  herself  carpets  of  tapestry; 

Her  clothing  is  fine  and  purple. 

Her  husband  is  known  in  the  gates, 

When  he  sitteth  among  the  elders  of  the  land, 

She  maketh  linen  garments  and  selleth  them, 

And  delivereth  girdles  unto  the  merchant. 

Strength  and  dignity  are  her  clothing; 

And  the  laugheth  at  the  time  to  come. 

She  openeth  her  mouth  with  wisdom, 

And  the  law  of  kindness  is  on  her  tongue, 

She  looketh  well  to  the  ways  of  her  household, 

And  eateth  not  the  bread  of  idleness. 

Her  children  rise  up  and  call  her  blessed, 

Her  husband  also,  and  he  praiseth  her,  saying, 

Many  daughters  have  done  virtuously, 

But  thou  excellest  them  all, 

Give  her  the  fruit  of  her  hand, 

And  let  her  works  praise  her  in  the  gate." 

[96] 


PARASITISM 

no  Joseph  or  David,  but  in  the  way  of  descen- 
dant only  a  Rehoboam,  under  whose  hand  the 
kingdom  was  to  totter  to  its  fall. 

In  the  East  to-day  the  same  story  has 
wearisomely  written  itself :  in  China,  where  the 
present  vitality  and  power  of  the  most  an- 
cient of  existing  civilizations  may  be  measured 
accurately  by  the  length  of  its  women's  shoes; 
in  Turkish  harems,  where  one  of  the  noblest 
dominant  Aryan  races  the  world  has  yet  pro- 
duced is  being  slowly  suffocated  in  the  arms 
of  a  parasite  womanhood,  and  might,  indeed, 
long  ago  have  been  obliterated,  had  not  a  cer- 
tain virility  and  strength  been  continually  re- 
infused  into  it  through  the  persons  of  pur- 
chased wives,  who  in  early  childhood  and 
youth  had  been  themselves  active  laboring 
peasants.  Everywhere,  in  the  past  as  in  the 
present,  the  parasitism  of  the  female  heralds 
the  decay  of  a  nation  or  class,  and  as  invari- 
ably indicates  disease  as  the  pustules  of  small- 
pox upon  the  skin  indicate  the  existence  of  a 
purulent  virus  in  the  system. 

We  are,  indeed,  far  from  asserting  that  the 
civilizations  of  the  past  which  have  decayed, 
have  decayed  alone  through  the  parasitism  of 

[971 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

their  females.  Vast,  far-reaching  social  phe- 
nomena have  invariably  causes  and  reactions 
immeasurably  too  complex  to  be  summed  up 
under  one  so  simple  a  term.  Behind  the 
phenomenon  of  female  parasitism  has  always 
lain  another  and  yet  larger  social  phenome- 
non; it  has  invariably  been  preceded,  as  we 
have  seen,  by  the  subjugation  of  large  bodies 
of  other  human  creatures,  either  as  slaves,  sub- 
ject races,  or  classes;  and  as  the  result  of  the 
excessive  labors  of  those  classes  there  has  al- 
ways been  an  accumulation  of  unearned 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  dominant  class  or 
race.  It  has  invariably  been  by  feeding  on 
this  wealth,  the  result  of  forced  or  ill-paid  la^ 
bor,  that  the  female  of  the  dominant  race  or 
class,  has  in  the  past  lost  her  activity  and  has 
comeJn_exist  purely  through  the  passive  j)er- 
f ormance  of  her  sexual  functions.  Without 
slaves  or  subject  classes  to  ^perform  the  crude 
physical  labors  of  life  and  produce  superfluous 
wealth,  the  parasitism  of  the  female  would,  in 
the  past,  have  been  an  impossibility. 

There  is,  therefore,  a  profound  truth  in  that 
universal  saw  which  states  that  the  decay  of 
the  great  nations  and  civilizations  of  the  past 

[98] 


PARASITISM 

lias  resulted  from  the  enervation  caused  by 
excessive  wealth  and  luxury;  and  there  is  a 
further,  and  if  possible  more  profound,  truth 
underlying  the  statement  that  their  destruc- 
tion has  ultimately  been  the  result  of  the  ener- 
vation of  the  entire  race,  male  and  female. 

But  when  we  come  further  to  inquire  how, 
exactly,  this  process  of  decay  took  place,  we 
shall  find  that  the  part  which  the  parasitism 
of  the  female  has  played  has  been  funda- 
mental. The  mere  use  of  any  of  the  material 
products  of  labor,  which  we  term  wealth,  can 
never  in  itself  produce  that  decay,  physical 
or  mental,  which  precedes  the  downfall  of 
great  civilized  nations.  The  eating  of  salmon 
at  ten  shillings  a  pound  can  in  itself  no  more 
debilitate  and  corrupt  the  moral,  intellectual, 
and  physical  constitution  of  the  man  consum- 
ing it,  than  it  could  enervate  his  naked  fore- 
fathers who  speared  it  in  their  rivers  for  food ; 
the  fact  that  an  individual  wears  a  robe  made 
from  the  filaments  of  a  worm  can  no  more 
deteriorate  his  spiritual  or  physical  fiber  than 
were  it  made  of  sheep's  wool;  an  entire  race, 
housed  in  marble  palaces,  faring  delicately, 
and  clad  in  silks,  and  surrounded  by  the 

[99] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

noblest  products  of  literature  and  plastic  art, 
so  those  palaces,  viands,  garments,  and  prod- 
ucts of  art  were  the  result  of  their  own  la- 
bors, could  never  be  enervated  by  them.  The 
debilitating  effect  of  wealth  sets  in  at  that 
point  exactly  (and  never  before)  at  which 
the  supply  of  material  necessaries  and  com- 
forts, and  of  esthetic  enjoyments,  clogs  the 
individuality,  causing  it  to  rest  satisfied  in  the 
mere  passive  possession  of  the  results  of  the 
labor  of  others,  without  feeling  any  necessity 
or  desire  for  further  productive  activity  of  its 
own.1 

The  exact  material  condition  at  which  this 
point  will  be  reached  will  vary,  not  only  with 
the  race  and  the  age,  but  with  the  individual. 
A  Marcus  Aurelius  in  a  palace  of  gold  and 
marble  was  able  to  retain  his  simplicity  and 
virility  as  completely  as  though  he  had  lived 
in  a  cow-herd's  hut;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  is  quite  possible  for  the  wife  of  a  savage 

iQf  the  other  deleterious  effects  of  unearned  wealth  on  the 
individual  or  class  possessing  it,  such  as  its  power  of  lessening 
human  sympathy,  &c.,  &c.,  we  do  not  now  speak,  as  while  ulti- 
mately and  indirectly,  undoubtedly,  tending  to  disintegrate  a 
society,  they  do  not  necessarily  and  immediately  enervate  it, 
which  enervation  is  the  point  we  are  here  considering. 

[100] 


PARASITISM 

chief,  who  has  but  four  slaves  to  bring  her  her 
corn  and  milk  and  spread  her  skins  in  the  sun, 
to  become  almost  as  purely  parasitic  as  the 
most  delicately  pampered  female  of  fashion 
in  ancient  Rome,  or  modern  Paris,  London, 
or  New  York;  while  the  exact  amount  of  un- 
earned material  wealth  which  will  emasculate 
individuals  in  the  same  society  will  vary  ex- 
actly as  their  intellectual  and  moral  fiber  and 
natural  activity  are  strong  or  weak.1 

The  debilitating  effect  of  unlabored-for 
wealth  lies,  then,  not  in  the  nature  of  any  ma- 
terial adjunct  to  life  in  itself,  but  in  the 
power  it  may  possess  of  robbing  the  individual 
of  all  incentive  to  exertion,  thus  destroying 
the  intellectual,  the  physical,  and  finally,  the 
moral  fiber. 

In  all  civilizations  of  the  past  examination 
will  show  that  almost  invariably  it  has  been 
the  female  who  has  tended  first  to  reach  this 

i  It  is  not  uncommon  In  modern  societies  to  find  women  of  a 
class  relatively  very  moderately  wealthy,  the  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  shopkeepers  or  professional  men,  who,  if  their  male 
relations  will  supply  them  with  a  very  limited  amount  of  money 
without  exertion  on  their  part,  will  become  as  completely 
parasitic  and  useless  as  women  with  untold  wealth  at  their 
command. 

[101] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

point,  and  we  think  examination  will  show  that 
it  has  almost  invariably  been  from  the  woman 
to  the  man  that  enervation  and  decay  have 
spread. 

Why  this  should  be  so  is  obvious.  Firstly, 
it  is  in  the  sphere  of  domestic  labor  that  slave 
or  hired  labor  most  easily  and  insidiously  pen- 
etrates. The  force  of  blows  or  hireling  gold 
can  far  more  easily  supply  laborers  as  the  pre- 
parers  of  food  and  clothing,  and  even  as  the 
rearers  of  children,  than  it  can  supply  laborers 
fitted  to  be  entrusted  with  the  toils  of  war 
and  government,  which  have  in  the  past  been 
the  especial  sphere  of  male  toil.  The  Roman 
woman  had  for  generations  been  supplanted 
in  the  sphere  of  her  domestic  labors  and  in  the 
toil  of  rearing  and  educating  her  offspring, 
and  had  long  become  abjectly  parasitic,  be- 
fore the  Roman  male  had  been  able  to  sub- 
stitute the  labor  of  the  hireling  and  barbarian 
for  his  own,  in  the  army,  and  in  the  drudgeries 
of  governmental  toil. 

Secondly,  the  female  having  one  all-impor- 
tant though  passive  function  which  cannot  be 
taken  from  her,  and  which  is  peculiarly  con- 
nected with  her  own  person,  in  the  act  of 
[102] 


PARASITISM 

child-bearing,  and  her  mere  sexual  attributes 
being  an  obj-ect  of  desire  and  cupidity  to  the 
male,  she  is  liable  in  a  peculiarly  insidious  and 
gradual  manner  to  become  dependent  on  this 
one  sexual  function  alone  for  her  support. 
So  much  is  this  the  case,  that  even  when  she 
does  not  in  any  way  perform  this  function 
there  is  a  curious  tendency  for  the  kudos  of 
the  function  still  to  hang  about  her,  and  for 
her  mere  potentiality  in  the  direction  of  a 
duty  which  she  may  never  fulfil  to  be  con- 
fused in  her  own  estimation  and  that  of  so- 
ciety with  the  actual  fulfilment  of  that  func- 
tion. Under  the  mighty  egis  of  the  woman 
who  bears  and  rears  offspring  and  in  other 
directions  labors  actively  for  her  race,  creeps 
in  gradually  and  unnoticed  the  woman  who 
does  none  of  these  things.  From  the  mighty 
laboring  woman  who  bears  human  creatures 
to  the  full  extent  of  her  power,  rears  her 
offspring  unaided,  and  performs  at  the  same 
time  severe  social  labor  in  other  directions 
(and  who  is  undoubtedly,  wherever  found, 
the  most  productive  toiler  known  to  the 
race) ;  it  is  but  one  step,  though  a  long  one, 
from  this  woman,  to  the  woman  who  pro- 
[103] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

duces  offspring  freely  but  does  not  herself 
rear  them,  and  performs  no  compensatory 
social  labor.  From  this  woman,  again,  to  the 
one  who  bears  few  or  no  children,  and 


forms  no  productive  social  labor,  but  wHo, 

whether  as  a  wife  or  mistress,  lives  by  the  ex- 

ercisfi_pf  her  sex  function  alone,  the  step  is 

shorJL    There_i&  buLone  step  farther  to  the 

prostitute,  who  affects  no  form  of  productive 

labor,  and  who,  in  place  of  life,  is  recognized 

as  producing  disease  and  death,  but  who  exists 

parasitically    through    her    sexual    attribute. 

/Enormous    as    is   the   distance   between    the 

I  women  at  the  two  extremes  of  this  series,  and 

/  sharply  opposed  as  their  relation  to  the  world  is, 

/  there  is  yet,  in  actual  life,  no  sharp,  clear,  sud- 

den-drawn line  dividing  the  women  of  the  one 

type  from  those  of  the  other.     They  shade  off 

into  each  other  by  delicate  and  insensible  de- 

grees.    And  it  is   down  this  inclined  plane 

that  the  women  of  civilized  races  are  pecul- 

iarly tempted,  unconsciously,  to  slip  from  the 

noble  height  of  a  condition  of  the  most  stren- 

uous social  activity,  into  a  condition  of  com- 

plete, helpless,  and  inactive  parasitism,  with- 

out being  clearly  aware  of  the  fact  them- 

[104] 


PARASITISM 

selves,  and  without  society's  becoming  so —  "\ 
the  woman  who  has  ceased  to  rear  her  own     } 
offspring,  or  who  has  ceased  to  bear  offspring    / 
at  all,  and  who  performs  no  other  productive    ( 
social  function,  yet  shields  the  fact  from  her    I 
own  eyes  by  dwelling  on  the  fact  that  she  is  a  / 
woman,   in   whom   the   capacity   is    at   least 
latent.1 

i  There  is,  indeed,  an  interesting  analogous  tendency  on  the 
part  of  the  parasitic  male,  wherever  found,  to  shield  his  true 
condition  from  his  own  eyes  and  those  of  the  world  by  playing 
at  the  ancient  ancestral  forms  of  male  labor.  He  is  almost 
always  found  talking  loudly  of  the  protection  he  affords  to 
helpless  females  and  to  society,  though  he  is  in  truth  himself 
protected  through  the  exertion  of  soldiers,  policemen,  magis- 
trates, and  society  generally;  and  he  is  almost  invariably  fond 
of  dangling  a  sword  or  other  weapon,  and  wearing  a  uniform, 
for  the  assumption  of  militarism  without  severe  toil  delights 
him.  But  it  is  in  a  degenerate  travesty  of  the  ancient  labor 
of  hunting  (where,  at  terrible  risk  to  himself,  and  with  endless 
fatigue,  his  ancestors  supplied  the  race  with  its  meat  and 
defended  it  from  destruction  by  wild  beasts)  that  he  finds  his 
greatest  satisfaction;  it  serves  to  render  the  degradation  and 
uselessness  of  his  existence  less  obvious  to  himself  and  to  oth- 
ers than  if  he  passed  his  life  reclining  in  an  armchair. 

On  Yorkshire  moors  to-day  may  be  seen  walls  of  sod,  be- 
hind which  hide  certain  human  males,  while  hard-laboring 
men  are  employed  from  early  dawn  in  driving  birds  towards 
them.  As  the  birds  are  driven  up  to  him,  the  hunter  behind 
his  wall  raises  his  deadly  weapon,  and  the  bird,  which  it  had 
taken  so  much  human  labor  to  rear  and  provide,  falls  dead 
at  his  feet;  thereby  greatly  to  the  increase  of  the  hunter's 

[105] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

These  peculiarities  in  her  condition  have  in 
all  civilized  societies  laid  the  female  more 
early  and  seriously  open  to  the  attacks  of  par- 
asitism than  the  male.  And  while  the  ac- 
cumulation of  wealth  has  always  been  the 
antecedent  condition,  and  the  degeneracy  and 
effeteness  of  the  male  the  final  and  obvious 
cause  of  the  decay  of  the  great  dominant  races 
of  the  past ;  yet,  between  these  two  has  always 
lain,  as  a  great  middle  term,  the  parasitism  of 
the  female,  without  which  the  first  would  have 
been  inoperative  and  the  last  impossible. 

Not  slavery,  nor  the  most  vast  accumula- 
tions of  wealth,  could  destroy  a  nation  by 

glory,  when,  the  toils  of  the  chase  over,  he  returns  to  his  city 
haunts  to  record  his  bag.  One  might  almost  fancy  one  saw 
arise  from  the  heathery  turf  the  shade  of  some  ancient  Teu- 
tonic ancestor,  whose  dust  has  long  reposed  there,  pointing  a 
finger  of  scorn  at  his  degenerate  descendant,  as  he  leers  out 
from  behind  the  sod  wall.  During  the  later  Roman  empire, 
Commodus,  in  the  degenerate  days  of  Rome,  at  great  expense 
had  wild  beasts  brought  from  distant  lands  that  he  might  have 
the  glory  of  slaying  them  in  the  Roman  circus;  and  medals 
representing  himself  as  Hercules  slaying  the  Nemean  lion  were 
struck  at  his  orders.  We  are  not  aware  that  any  representa- 
tion has  yet  been  made  in  the  region  of  plastic  art  of  the  hero 
of  the  sod  wall;  but  history  repeats  itself — that  also  may 
come.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  these  hunters  are  not  youths,  but 
often  ripely  adult  men,  before  whom  all  the  lofty  enjoyments 
and  employments  possible  to  the  male  in  modern  life  lie  open. 

[106] 


PARASITISM 

enervation,    whose    women    remained    active, 
virile,  and  laborious. 

The  conception  which  again  and  again  ap- 
pears to  have  haunted  successive  societies,  that 
/  it  was  a  possibility  for  the  human  male  to  ad- 
vance  in  physical  power  and  intellectual  vigor, 
while  his  companion  female  became  stationary 
and  inactive,  taking  no  share  in  the  labors  of 
society  beyond  the  passive  fulfilment  of  sex- 
ual functions,  has  always  been  negated.  It 
has  ended  as  would  end  the  experiment  of  a 
man  seeking  to  raise  a  breed  of  winning  race- 
horses out  of  unexercised,  short-winded, 
knock-kneed  mares.  No,  more  disastrously! 
For  while  the  female  animal  transmits  herself 
to  her  descendant  only  or  mainly  by  means 
of  germinal  inheritance,  and  through  the  in- 
fluence she  may  exert  over  it  during  gestation, 
the  human  female,  by  producing  the  intellect- 
ual and  moral  atmosphere  in  which  the  early 
infant  years  of  life  are  passed,  impresses 
herself  far  more  indelibly  on  her  descendants. 
Only  an  able  and  laboring  womanhood  can 
permanently  produce  an  able  and  laboring 
manhood ;  only  an  effete  and  inactive  male  can 
ultimately  be  produced  by  an  effete  and  in- 
[107] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

active  womanhood.  The  curled  darling, 
scented  and  languid,  with  his  drawl,  his  deli- 
cate apparel,  his  devotion  to  the  rarity  and 
variety  of  his  viands,  whose  severest  labor  is 
the  search  after  pleasure,  and  for  whom  even 
the  chase,  which  was  for  his  remote  ancestor 
an  invigorating  and  manly  toil  essential  for 
the  meat  and  life  of  his  people,  becomes  a  lux- 
urious and  farcical  amusement; — this  male, 
whether  found  in  the  later  Roman  Empire, 
the  Turkish  harem  of  to-day,  or  in  our  North- 
ern civilizations,  is  possible  only  because  gen- 
erations of  parasitic  women  have  preceded  him. 
More  repulsive  than  the  parasite  female  her- 
self, because  a  yet  further  product  of  decay, 
it  is  yet  only  the  scent  of  his  mother's  boudoir 
that  we  smell  in  his  hair.  He  is  like  to  the 
bald  patches  and  rotten  wool  on  the  back  of 
a  scabby  sheep;  which  indeed  indicate  that, 
deep  beneath  the  surface,  a  parasite  insect  is 
eating  its  way  into  the  flesh,  but  which  are  not 
so  much  the  cause  of  disease  as  its  final  man- 
ifestation. 

As  we  have  said,  it  is  the  power  of  the  hu- 
man female  to  impress  herself  on  her  descend- 
ants, male  and  female,  through  germinal  in- 

[108] 


PARASITISM 

heritance,  through  influence  during  the  period 
of  gestation,  and  above  all  by  producing  the 
mental  atmosphere  in  which  the  impressionable 
infant  years  of  life  are  passed,  which  makes  the 
condition  of  the  child-bearing  female  one  of 
paramount  interest  to  the  race.  It  is  this  fact 
which  causes  even  prostitution  (in  many  re- 
spects the  most  repulsive  form  of  female  para- 
sitism which  afflicts  humanity)  to  be,  prob- 
ably, not  more  adverse  to  the  advance  and 
even  to  the  conservation  of  a  healthy  and  pow- 
erful society  than  the  parasitism  of  its  child- 
bearing  woman.  For  the  prostitute^  heavily 
as  she  weights  society  for  her  support,  return- 
ing diseaselflncl  mental  and  emotional  disinte- 
gration for  what  she  consumes,  does  not  yet 
so_jmmediately  -affect-the-  next  generation  as 
the  kept  wife^  or  kept  mistress,  who  impresses 
her  effete  image  indelibly  on  the  generations 
succjeejding.1 

No  man  ever  yet  entered  life  farther  than 

i  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the  woman  who  merely 
bears  and  brings  a  child  into  the  world,  and  then  leaves  it  to 
be  fed  and  reared  by  the  hands  of  another,  has  performed  very 
much  less  than  half  of  the  labor  of  producing  adult  humans. 
In  such  cases,  it  is  the  nurse  and  not  the  mother  who  is  the 
most  important  laborer. 

[109] 


the  length  of  one  navel-cord  from  the  body 
of  the  woman  who  bore  him.  It  is  the  woman 
who  is  the  final  standard  of  the  race,  from 
which  there  can  be  no  departure  for  any  dis- 
tance for  any  length  of  time,  in  any  direction : 
as  her  brain  weakens,  weakens  the  man's  she 
bears;  as  her  muscle  softens,  softens  his;  as 
she  decays,  decays  the  people. 

Other  causes  may,  and  do,  lead  to  the  ener- 
vation and  degeneration  of  a  class  or  race ;  the 
parasitism  of  its  child-bearing  women  must. 

We,  the  European  women  of  this  age,  stand 
to-day  where  again  and  again,  in  the  history 
of  the  past,  women  of  other  races  have  stood; 
but  our  condition  is  yet  more  grave,  and  of 
wider  import  to  humanity  as  a  whole  than 
theirs  ever  was.  Let  us  again  consider  more 
closely  why  this  is  so. 


[110] 


PARASITISM 

(Continued) 


CHAPTER  III 

PAEASITISM  (continued) 

WE  have  seen  that,  in  the  past,  no  such 
thing  as  the  parasitism  of  the  entire  body  or 
large  majority  of  the  females  inhabiting  any 
territory  was  possible.  Beneath  that  body  of 
women  of  the  dominant  class  or  race,  who  did 
not  labor  either  mentally  or  physically,  there 
has  always  been  of  necessity  a  far  more  vast 
body  of  females  who  not  only  performed  the 
crude  physical  toil  essential  to  the  existence  of 
society  before  the  introduction  of  mechanical 
methods  of  production,  but  who  were  com- 
pelled to  labor  the  more  intensely  because  there 
was  a  parasite  class  above  them  to  be  main- 
tained by  their  physical  toil.  The  more  the 
female  parasite  flourished  of  old,  in  one  class 
or  race,  the  more  certainly  all  women  of  other 
classes  or  races  were  compelled  to  labor  only 
too  excessively;  and  ultimately  these  females 
and  their  descendants  were  apt  to  supplant 
[1131 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  more  enervated  class  or  race.  In  the 
absence  of  machinery  and  of  a  vast  employ- 
ment of  the  motor  forces  of  nature,  parasitism 
could  only  threaten  a  comparatively  small 
section  of  any  community,  and  a  minute  sec- 
tion of  the  human  race  as  a  whole.  \  Female 
parasitism  in  the  past  resembled  gout — a 
disease  dangerous  only  to  the  over-fed,  pam- 
pered, and  few,  never  to  the  population  of  any 
society  as  a  whole. 

At  the  present  day,  so  enormous  has  been 
the  advance  made  in  the  substitution  of  me- 
chanical force  for  crude,  physical,  human 
exertion  (mechanical  force  being  employed  to- 
day even  in  the  shaping  of  feeding-bottles  and 
the  creation  of  artificial  foods  as  substitutes 
for  mother's  milk!)  that  it  is  now  possible  not 
only  for  a  small  and  wealthy  section  of  women 
in  each  civilized  community  to  be  maintained 
without  performing  any  of  the  ancient,  crude, 
physical  labors  of  their  sex,  and  without  de- 
pending on  the  slavery  of,  or  any  vast  increase 
in  the  labor  of,  other  classes  of  females;  but 
this  condition  has  already  been  reached,  or  is 
tending  to  be  reached,  by  that  large  mass  of 


PARASITISM 

women  in  civilized  societies  who  form  the 
intermediate  class  between  poor  and  rich. 
During  the  next  fifty  years,  so  rapid  will  un- 
doubtedly be  the  spread  of  the  material  con- 
ditions of  civilization,  both  in  the  societies  at 
present  civilized  and  in  the  societies  at  present 
unpermeated  by  our  material  civilization,  that 
the  ancient  forms  of  female,  domestic,  physical 
labor  of  even  the  women  of  the  poorest  classes 
will  be  little  required,  their  place  being  taken, 
not  by  other  females,  but  by  always  increas- 
ingly perfected  labor-saving  machinery. 

Thus,   fprnalp  jar^sitJSm,  whlV^   1>r>    **"*   Pa.gt 

threatened  only  ar-ininutc  section  of  earth's 
women,  undpr  exif^mg-^ondTtrons  threatens 
vast  masses,  and  naayr«Bder  future  conditions, 
threaten  the  entire  body. 

If  woman  is  content  to  leave  to  the  male  all 
labor  in  the  new  and  all-important  fields  which 
are  rapidly  opening  before  the  human  race; 
if,  as  the  old  forms  of  domestic  labor  slip  from 
her  for  ever  and  inevitably,  she  does  not  grasp 
the  new,  it  is  inevitable,  that,  ultimately,  not 
merely  a  class,  but  the  whole  bodies  of  females 
in  civilized  societies,  must  sink  into  a  state  of 
[115] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

more  or  less  absolute  dependence   on  their 
sexual  functions  alone.1 

As  new  forms  of  natural  force  are  mastered 
and  mechanical  appliances  perfected,  it  will  be 
quite  possible  for  the  male  half  of  all  civilized 
races  (and  therefore  ultimately  of  all)  to 
absorb  the  entire  fields  of  intellectual  and 
highly  trained  manual  labor;  and  it  would  be 
entirely  possible  for  the  female  half  of  the 
race,  whether  as  prostitutes,  as  kept  mistresses, 
or  as  kept  wives,  to  cease  from  all  forms  of 
active  toil,  and,  as  the  passive  tools  of  sexual 
reproduction,  or,  more  decadently  still,  as  the 
mere  instruments  of  sexual  indulgence,  to  sink 

i  How  real  is  this  apparently  very  remote  danger  is  interest- 
ingly illustrated  by  a  proposition  gravely  made  a  few  years  ago 
by  a  man  of  note  in  England.  He,  proposed  that  a  compulsory 
provision  should  be  made  for  at  least  the  women  of  the  upper 
and  middle  classes,  by  which  they  might  be  maintained  through 
life  entirely  without  regard  to  any  productive  labor  they  might 
perform,  not  even  the  passive  labor  of  sexual  reproduction  be- 
ing of  necessity  required  of  them. 

That  this  proposal  was  received  by  the  women  striving  to 
reconstruct  the  relation  of  the  modern  woman  to  life  without 
acclamation  and  with  scorn,  may  have  surprised  its  maker;  but 
with  no  more  reason  than  that  man  would  have  for  feeling 
surprise  who,  seeing  a  number  of  persons  anxious  to  escape 
the  infection  of  some  contagious  disease,  should  propose  as  a 
cure  to  inoculate  them  all  with  it  in  its  most  virulent  form! 

[116] 


PARASITISM 

into  a  condition  of  complete  and  helpless  sex- 
parasitism. 

Sex-parasitism,  therefore,  presents  itself  at 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  begin- 
ning of  the  twentieth  in  a  guise  which  it  has 
never  before  worn.  We,  the  women  of  the 
civilization  of  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth 
centuries,  stand  therefore  in  a  position  the 
gravity  and  importance  of  which  was  not 
equaled  by  that  of  any  of  our  forerunners  in 
the  ancient  civilization.  As  we  master  and 
rise  above,  or  fall  and  are  conquered  by,  the 
difficulties  of  our  position,  so  also  will  be  the 
future,  not  merely  of  our  own  class,  or  even 
of  our  own  race  alone,  but  also  of  those  vast 
masses  who  are  following  on  in  the  wake  of 
our  civilization.  The  decision  we  are  called 
on  to  make  is  a  decision  for  the  race;  behind 
us  comes  on  the  tread  of  incalculable  millions 
of  feet. 

There  is  thus  no  truth  in  the  assertion__so 
often  made,  even  by  thoughtful  persons,  that 

the     ma1f»     Inhor     qiipctirm     nnd— ihg  -  JWQman's 

question  of  our  day  are  completely  one,  and 

that,  would  the  women  of  the  European  race 

[117] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

of_to-day  but  wait  peacefully  till  the  males 
alone  had  solved  their  problem,  they  weald 
find  thatr  their  "wn  bad  J^fi-y^lvM  at  the  same 
time. 

Were  the  entire  male  labor  problem  of  this 
age  satisfactorily  settled  to-morrow;  were  all 
the  unemployed  or  uselessly  emplbyea  males 
at  both  ends  of  societies,  whom  the  changes 
of  modern  civilization  have  robbed  of  their 
ancient  forms  of  labor,  so  educated  and  trained 
that  they  were  perfectly  fitted  for  the  new 
conditions  of  life ;  and  were  the  material  benefit 
and  intellectual  possibilities,  which  the  sub- 
stitution of  mechanical  for  human  labor  now 
makes  possible  to  humanity,  no  longer  ab- 
sorbed by  the  few  but  dispersed  among  the 
whole  mass  of  males  in  return  for  their  trained 
labor,  yet  the  woman's  problem  might  be 
further  from  satisfactory  solution  than  it  is 
to-day ;  and,  if  it  were  affected  at  all,  might  be 
affected  for  the  worse.  It  is  wholly  untrue 
that  fifty  pounds,  or  two  thousand,  earned  by 
the  male  as  the  result  of  his  physical  or  mental 
toil,  if  part  of  it  be  spent  by  him  in  supporting 
non-laboring  females,  whether  as  prostitutes, 
wives,  or  mistresses,  is  the  same  thing  to  the 
[118] 


PARASITISM 

female  or  to  the  race  as  though  that  sum  had 
been  earned  by  her  own  exertion,  either  di- 
rectly as  wages  or  indirectly  by  toiling  for  the 
man  whose  wages  supported  her.  For  the 
moment,  truly,  the  woman  so  tended  lies  softer 
and  warmer  than  had  she  been  compelled  to 
exert  herself;  ultimately,  intellectually,  mor- 
ally, and  even  physically,  the  difference  in 
the  effect  upon  her  as  an  individual  and  on 
the  race  is  the  difference  between  advance  and 
degradation,  between  life  and  death.  The  in- 
creased wealth  of  the  male  no  more  of  neces- 
sity benefits  and  raises  the  female  upon  whom 
he  expends  it  than  the  increased  wealth  of 
his  mistress  necessarily  benefits  mentally  or 
physically  a  poodle  because  she  can  give  him 

a  down  cushion  in  place  of  one  of  feathers,  and 

I  __,' 
chicken  in  place  of  beef.  1  The—wealthier  the 

males- ^f-^r  society  beoohkj,  the  greater  the 
tempjation^  both,  to  themselves  and  to  the  f'e- 
males  connected  with  them,  to  ^If4&-toward 
female  parasitism./ 

The  readjustment  of  the  position  of  the 
male  worker,  if  it  led  to  a  more  equitable  dis- 
tribution of  wealth  among  males,  might  indeed 
diminish  slightly  the  accompanying  tendency 
[119] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

to  parasitism  in  the  very  wealthiest  female 
class ;  but  it  would,  on  the  other  hand,  open  up 
exactly  those  conditions  which  make  parasitism 
possible  to  millions  of  women  to-day  leading 
healthy  and  active  lives.1 

i  The  fact  cannot  be  too  often  dwelt  upon  that  parasitism  is 
not  connected  with  any  definite  amount  of  wealth.  Any  awn 
supplied  to  an  individual  which  will  so  far  satisfy  him  or  her 
at  to  enable  them  to  live  without  exertion  may  absolutely 
parasitize  them;  while  vast  wealth  (unhealthy  as  its  effects 
generally  tend  to  be)  may,  upon  certain  rare  and  noble  natures, 
exert  hardly  any  enervating  or  deleterious  influence.  An  amus- 
ing illustration  of  the  different  points  at  which  enervation  is 
reached  by  different  females  came  under  our  own  observation. 
The  wife  of  an  American  millionaire  was  visited  by  a  woman, 
the  daughter  and  also  the  widow  of  small  professional  men. 
She  stated  that  she  was  in  need  of  both  food  and  clothing. 
The  millionaire's  wife  gave  her  a  leg  of  mutton  and  two  val- 
uable dresses.  The  woman  proceeded  to  whine,  though  in 
vigorous  health,  that  she  had  no  one  to  carry  them  home  for 
her,  and  could  not  think  of  carrying  them  herself.  The  Amer- 
ican, the  descendant  of  generations  of  able,  laboring,  New 
England,  Puritan  women,  tucked  the  leg  of  mutton  under  one 
arm  and  the  bundle  of  clothes  under  the  other  and  walked  off 
down  the  city  street  towards  the  woman's  dwelling,  followed 
by  the  astonished  pauper  parasite. 

The  most  helpless  case  of  female  degeneration  we  ever  came 
into  contact  with  was  that  of  a  daughter  of  a  poor  English 
officer  on  half  pay,  who  had  to  exist  on  a  few  hundreds  a 
year.  This  woman  could  neither  cook  her  own  food  nor  make 
her  own  clothes,  nor  was  she  engaged  in  any  social,  political, 
or  intellectual,  or  artistic  labor.  Though  able  to  dance  for  a 
night  or  play  tennis  for  an  afternoon,  she  was  yet  hardly  able 
to  do  her  own  hair  or  attire  herself,  and  appeared  absolutely 

[120] 


PARASITISM 

That  the  two  problems  are  not  identical  is 
shown,  if  indeed  evidence  were  needed,  by  the 
fact  that  those  males  most  actively  employed 
in  attempting  to  readjust  the  relations  of  the 
mass  of  laboring  males  to  the  new  conditions 
of  life,  are  sometimes  precisely  those  males  who 
are  most  bitterly  opposed  to  woman  in  her 
attempt  to  readjust  her  own  position.  Not 
by  the  members  of  those  professions  generally 
regarded  as  the  strongholds  of  obstructionism 
and  prejudice  has  a  more  short-sighted  op- 
position often  been  made  to  the  attempts  of 
woman  to  enter  new  fields  of  labor,  than  have 
again  and  again  been  made  by  male  hand- 
workers, whether  as  isolated  individuals  or  in 
their  corporate  capacity  as  trade  unions. 
They  have,  at  least  in  some  certain  instances, 

to  have  lost  all  power  of  compelling  herself  to  do  anything 
which  was  at  the  moment  fatiguing  or  displeasing,  as  all  labor 
is  apt  to  be,  however  great  its  ultimate  reward.  In  a  life  of 
twenty-eight  years  this  woman  had  probably  not  contributed  one 
hour's  earnest  toil  to  the  increase  of  the  sum  total  of  productive 
human  labor.  Surrounded  with  acres  of  cultivable  land,  she 
would  possibly  have  preferred  to  lie  down  and  die  of  hunger 
rather  than  have  cultivated  half  an  acre  for  food.  "TJiis  is  an 
extreme  case;  but  the  ultimate  rffgg_2f  pnrnc{fic"1  ir  nin>«y«  « 
paralyse  of  the  will  find  an  inability  in  compel  oneself  into  any 
course  of  action  for  the  moment  unpleasurable  and  exhaustive. 

[121] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

endeavored  to  exclude  women,  not  merely  from 
new  fields  of  intellectual  and  social  labor,  but 
even  from  those  ancient  fields  of  textile  man- 
ufacture and  handicraft,  which  have  through 
all  generations  of  the  past  been  woman's. 
The  patent  and  undeniable  fact  that  where  the 
male  labor  movement  flourishes  the  woman's 
movement  also  flourishes  rises  not  from  the 
fact  that  they  are  identical,  but  that  the  same 
healthy  and  virile  condition  in  a  race  or  society 
gives  rise  to  both. 

As  two  streams  rising  from  one  fountain- 
head  and  running  a  parallel  course  through 
long  reaches  may  yet  remain  wholly  distinct, 
one  finding  its  way  satisfactorily  to  the  sea, 
while  the  other  loses  itself  in  sand  or  becomes 
a  stagnant  marsh,  so  our  modern  male  and 
female  movements,  taking  their  rise  from  the 
same  material  conditions  in  modern  civilization, 
and  presenting  endless  and  close  analogies  with 
one  another  in  their  cause  of  development 
yet  remain  fundamentally  distinct.  By  both 
movements  the  future  of  the  race  must  be 
profoundly  modified  for  good  or  evil;  both 
touch  the  race  in  a  manner  absolutely  vital; 
but  both  will  have  to  be  fought  out  on  their 
[122] 


PARASITISM 

own  ground,  and  independently,  and  it  will 
be  only  by  determined,  conscious,  and  persist- 
ent action  on  the  part  of  woman  that  the  solu- 
tion of  her  own  labor  problems  will  proceed 
co-extensively  with  that  of  the  other. 

How  distinct,  though  similar,  is  the  under- 
lying motive  of  the  two  movements,  is  mani- 
fested most  clearly  by  this  fact,  that,  while 
the  male  labor  movement  takes  its  rise  mainly 
among  the  poor  and  hand-laboring  classes, 
where  the  material  pressure  of  the  modern 
conditions  of  life  fall  heaviest,  and  where  the 
danger  of  physical  suffering  and  even  extinc- 
tion under  that  pressure  is  most  felt;  the 
woman's  labor  movement  has  taken  its  rise 
almost  as  exclusively  among  the  wealthy, 
cultured,  and  brain-laboring  classes,  where 
alone  at  the  present  day  the  danger  of  enerva- 
tion through  non-employment,  and  of  degen- 
eration through  dependence  on  the  sex  func- 
tion exists. 

The  female  labor  movement  is,  in  its 
ultimate  essence,  an  endeavor  on  the  part  of 
a  section  of  the  race  to  save  itself  from  in- 
activity and  degeneration,  and  this  even  at 
the  immediate  cost  of  most  heavy  loss  in 
[123] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

material  comfort  and  ease  to  the  individuals 
composing  it.  The  male  labor  movement  is, 
directly  and  in  the  first  place,  material;  and, 
at  least  superficially,  more  or  less  self-seek- 
ing, though  its  ultimate  reaction  on  society 
by  saving  the  poorer  members  from  degra- 
dation and  dependency  and  want  is  undoubt- 
edly wholly  social  and  absolutely  essential 
for  the  health  and  continued  development 
of  the  human  race.  [In  the  woman's  labor 
movement  of  our  day,  which  has  essentially 
taken  its  rise  among  women  of  the  more  cul- 
tured and  wealthy  classes,  and  which  consists 
mainly  in  a  demand  to  have  the  doors  leading 
to  professional,  political,  and  highly  skilled 
labor  thrown  open  to  them,  the  ultimate  end 
can  only  be  attained  at  the  cost  of  more  or 
less  intense,  immediate,  personal  suffering  and 
renunciation,  though  eventually,  if  brought  to 
a  satisfactory  conclusion,  it  will  undoubtedly 
tend  to  the  material  and  physical  well-being 
of  woman  herself,  as  well  as  to  that  of  her  male 
companions  and  descendants. 

The  coming  half -century  will  be  a  time  of 
peculiar  strain,  as  mankind  seeks  rapidly  to 
adjust  moral  ideals  and  social  relationships 
[124] 


PARASITISM 

and  the  general  ordering  of  life  to  the  new 
and  continually  unfolding  material  conditions. 
If  these  two  great  movements  of  our  age,  hav- 
ing this  as  their  object,  can  be  brought  into 
close  harmony  and  co-operation,  the  readjust- 
ment will  be  the  sooner  and  more  painlessly 
accomplished;  but,  for  the  moment,  the  two 
movements  alike  in  their  origin  and  alike  in 
many  of  their  methods  of  procedure,  remain 
distinct. 

It  is  this  fact,  the  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  women  taking  their  share  in  the 
woman's  movement  of  our  age,  that  their 
efforts  are  not,  and  cannot  be,  of  immediate 
advantage  to  themselves,  but  that  they  almost 
of  necessity  and  immediately  lead  to  loss  and 
renunciation,  which  gives  to  this  movement  its 
very  peculiar  tone;  setting  it  apart  from  the 
large  mass  of  economic  movements,  placing  it 
rather  in  a  line  with  those  vast  religious  de- 
velopments which  at  the  interval  of  ages  have 
swept  across  humanity,  irresistibly  modifying 
and  reorganizing  it. 

It  is  the  perception  of  this  fact,  that,  not 
for  herself,  nor  even  for  fellow  women  alone, 
but  for  the  benefit  of  humanity  at  large,  she 
[125] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

must  seek  to  readjust  herself  to  life,  which 
lends  to  the  woman's  most  superficial  and 
seemingly  trivial  attempt  at  readjustment  a 
certain  dignity  and  importance. 

It  is  this  profound  hidden  conviction  which 
removes  from  the  sphere  of  the  ridiculous  the 
attitude  of  even  the  feeblest  woman  who 
waves  her  poor  little  "woman's  rights"  flag 
on  the  edge  of  a  platform,  and  which  causes 
us  to  forgive  even  the  passionate  denuncia- 
tions, not  always  wisely  thought  out,  in  which 
she  would  represent  the  evils  of  woman's  con- 
dition as  wrongs  intentionally  inflicted  upon 
her,  where  they  are  merely  the  inevitable  re- 
sults of  ages  of  social  movement. 

It  is  this  over-shadowing  consciousness  of  a 
large  impersonal  obligation  which  removes 
from  the  sphere  of  the  wholly  contemptible 
and  insignificant  even  the  action  of  the  in- 
dividual young  girl,  who  leaves  a  home  of 
comfort  or  luxury  for  a  city  garret,  where  in 
solitude,  and  under  that  stern  pressure  which 
is  felt  by  all  individuals  in  arms  against  the 
trend  of  their  environment,  she  seeks  to  acquire 
the  knowledge  necessary  for  entering  on  a 
new  form  of  labor.  It  is  this  profound  con- 
[126] 


PARASITISM 

sciousness  which  makes  not  less  than  heroic 
the  figure  of  the  little  half-starved  student, 
battling  against  gigantic  odds  to  take  her 
place  beside  man  in  the  fields  of  modern  in- 
tellectual toil,  and  which,  whether  she  succeed 
or  fail,  makes  her  a  landmark  in  the  course  of 
our  human  evolution.  It  is  this  consciousness 
of  large  impersonal  ends  to  be  attained,  and 
to  the  attainment  of  which  each  individual  is 
bound  to  play  her  part,  however  small,  which 
removes  from  the  domain  of  the  unnecessary, 
and  raises  to  importance,  the  action  of  each 
woman  who  resists  the  tyranny  of  fashions  in 
dress  or  bearing,  or  custom  which  impedes  her 
in  her  strife  towards  the  new  adjustment. 

It  is  this  consciousness  which  renders  al- 
most of  solemn  import  the  efforts  of  the 
individual  female  after  physical  or  mental 
self -culture  and  expansion;  this  which  fills 
with  a  lofty  enthusiasm  the  heart  of  the  young 
girl,  who,  it  may  be,  in  some  solitary  farm- 
house, in  some  distant  wild  of  Africa  or 
America,  deep  into  the  night  bends  over  her 
books  with  the  passion  and  fervor  with  which 
an  early  Christian  may  have  bent  over  the 
pages  of  his  Scriptures;  feeling  that,  it  may 
[1271 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

be,  she  fits  herself  by  each  increase  of  knowl- 
edge for  she  knows  not  what  duties  towards 
the  world,  in  the  years  to  come. 

It  is  this  consciousness  of  great  impersonal 
ends,  to  be  brought,  even  if  slowly  and  im- 
perceptibly, a  little  nearer  by  her  action,  which 
gives  to  many  a  woman  strength  for  renun- 
ciation, when  she  puts  from  her  the  lower 
type  of  sexual  relationship,  even  if  bound  up 
with  all  the  external  honor  a  legal  marriage 
can  confer,  if  it  offers  her  only  enervation  and 
parasitism.  This  consciousness  enables  her 
often  to  accept  poverty,  toil,  and  sexual  isola- 
tion (an  isolation  more  terrible  to  her  than  to 
any  male),  and  renunciation  of  motherhood, 
that  crowning  beatitude  of  the  woman's  ex- 
istence, which,  and  which  alone,  fully  com- 
pensates her  for  the  organic  sufferings  of 
womanhood — in  the  conviction  that,  by  so  do- 
ing, she  makes  more  possible  a  fuller  and 
higher  attainment  of  motherhood  and  wife- 
hood  to  the  women  who  will  follow  her. 

It   is   this   consciousness   which   makes   of 

solemn  importance  the  knock  of  the  humblest 

woman  at  the  closed  door  which  shuts  off  a 

new  field  of  labor,  physical  or  mental:  she  is 

[128] 


PARASITISM 

convinced  that,  not  for  herself,  but  in  the  serv- 
ice of  the  whole  race,  she  knocks. 

It  is  this  abiding  consciousness  of  an  end  to 
be  attained,  reaching  beyond  her  personal  life 
and  individual  interests,  which  constitutes  the 
religious  element  of  the  woman's  movement  of 
our  day,  and  binds  with  the  common  bond  of 
an  impersonal  enthusiasm  into  one  solid  body 
the  women  of  whatsoever  race,  class,  and  na- 
tion who  are  struggling  after  the  readjust- 
ment of  woman  to  life. 

This  it  is  also,  which  in  spite  of  defects 
and  failures  on  the  part  of  individuals,  yet 
makes  the  body  which  these  women  compose, 
as  a  whole,  one  of  the  most  impressive  and 
irresistible  of  modern  forces.  The  private 
soldier  of  the  great  victorious  army  is  not  al- 
ways an  imposing  object  as  he  walks  down 
the  village  street,  cap  on  side  of  head  and 
sword  dangling  between  his  legs,  nor  is  he  al- 
ways impressive  even  when  he  burnishes  up 
his  accoutrements  or  cleans  his  pannikins;  but 
it  is  of  individuals  such  as  these  that  the  great 
army  is  made,  which  to-morrow,  when  it  is 
gathered  together,  may  shake  the  world  with 
its  tread. 

[129] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

Possibly  not  one  woman  in  ten,  or  even  one 
woman  in  twenty  thousand  among  those  tak- 
ing part  in  this  struggle,  could  draw  up  a  clear 
and  succinct  account  of  the  causes  which  have 
led  to  the  disco-ordination  in  woman's  present 
position,  or  give  a  full  account  of  the  benefits 
to  flow  from  readjustment;  as  probably  not 
one  private  soldier  in  an  army  of  ten  or  even 
of  twenty  thousand,  though  he  is  willing  to 
give  his  life  for  his  land,  would  yet  be  able 
to  draw  up  a  clear  and  succinct  account  of  his 
land's  history  in  the  past  and  of  the  conditions 
which  have  made  war  inevitable;  and  almost 
as  little  can  he  often  paint  an  exact  and  de- 
tailed picture  of  the  benefits  to  flow  from 
his  efforts.  He  knows  his  land  has  need  of 
him;  he  knows  his  own  small  place  and 
work. 

It  is  possible  that  not  one  woman  in  ten 
thousand  has  grasped  with  scientific  exacti- 
tude, and  still  less  could  express  with  verbal 
sharpness,  the  great  central  conditions  which 
yet  compel  and  animate  her  into  action. 

Even  the  great,  central  fact,  that  with  each 
generation  the  entire  race  passes  through  the 
body  of  its  womanhood  as  through  a  mold, 
[130] 


PARASITISM 

reappearing  with  the  indelible  marks  of  that 
mold  upon  it,  that  as  the  os  cervix  of  woman, 
through  which  the  head  of  the  human  infant 
passes  at  birth,  forms  a  ring,  determining 
for  ever  the  size  at  birth  of  the  human  head, 
a  size  which  could  only  increase  if  in  the 
course  of  ages  the  os  cervix  of  woman  should 
itself  slowly  expand;  and  that  so  exactly  the 
intellectual  capacity,  the  physical  vigor,  the 
emotional  depth  of  woman,  forms  also  an  un- 
transcendable  circle,  circumscribing  with  each 
successive  generation  the  limits  of  the  expan- 
sion of  the  human  race; — even  this  fact  she 
may  not  so  clearly  have  grasped  intellectually 
as  to  be  able  to  throw  it  into  the  form  of  a 
logical  statement.  The  profound  truth,  that 
the  continued  development  of  the  human  race 
on  earth  (a  development  which,  as  the  old 
myths  and  dreams  of  a  narrow  personal 
heaven  fade  from  our  view,  becomes  increas- 
ingly for  many  of  us  the  spiritual  hope  by 
light  of  which  we  continue  to  live),  a  develop- 
ment which  we  hope  shall  make  the  humanity 
of  a  distant  future  as  much  higher  in  intel- 
lectual power  and  wider  in  social  sympathy 
than  the  highest  human  units  of  our  day, 
[131] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

as  that  is  higher  than  the  first  primeval  an- 
cestor who  with  quivering  limb  strove  to 
walk  upright  and  shape  his  lips  to  the  ex- 
pression of  a  word,  is  possible  only  if  the  male 
and  female  halves  of  humanity  progress  to- 
gether, expanding  side  by  side  in  the  future 
as  they  have  done  in  the  past,  even  this  truth 
it  is  possible  few  women  have  exactly  and 
logically  grasped  as  the  basis  of  their  action. 
The  truth  that,  as  the  first  primitive  human 
males  and  females,  unable  to  count  farther 
than  their  fingers,  or  grasp  an  abstract  idea, 
or  feel  the  controlling  power  of  social  emo- 
tion, could  only  develop  into  the  Sapphos, 
Aristotles,  and  Shelleys  of  a  more  expanded 
civilization,  if  side  by  side,  and  line  by  line, 
male  and  female  forms  have  expanded  to- 
gether, if,  as  the  convolutions  of  his  brain 
increased  in  complexity,  so  increased  the  con- 
volutions in  hers;  if,  as  her  forehead  grew 
higher,  so  developed  his;  and  that,  if  the  long 
upward  march  of  the  future  is  ever  to  be 
accomplished  by  the  race,  male  and  female 
must  march  side  by  side,  acting  and  reacting 
on  each  other  through  inheritance ;  or  progress 
is  impossible.  The  truth  that,  as  the  existence 
[132] 


PARASITISM 

of  even  the  male  Bushman  would  be  impos- 
sible without  the  existence  of  the  analogous 
Bush-woman,  with  the  same  gifts,  and  that 
races  which  can  produce  among  their  males  a 
William  Kingdon  Clifford,  a  Tolstoy,  or  a 
Robert  Browning,  would  be  inconceivable  and 
impossible,  unless  among  its  females  it  could 
also  produce  a  Sophia  Kovalevsky,  a  George 
Eliot,  or  a  Louise  Michel,  so,\  in  the  future, 
that  higher  and  more  socialized  human  race 
we  dream  of  can  only  come  into  existence,  be- 
cause both  the  sex  forms  have  evolved  to- 
gether, now  this  sex  and  then  that,  so  to 
speak,  Catching  up  the  ball  of  life  and  throw- 
ing it  back  to  the  other,  slightly  if  imper- 
ceptibly enlarging  and  beautifying  it  as  it 
passes  through  their  hands.  The  fact  that 
without  the  reaction  of  interevolution  between 
the  sexes,  there  can  be  no  real  and  permanent 
human  advance;  without  the  enlarged  deep- 
thinking  Eve  to  bear  him,  no  enlarged  Adam ; 
without  the  enlarged  widely  sympathizing 
Adam  to  beget  her,  no  enlarged  widely  com- 
prehending Eve;  without  an  enlarged  Adam 
and  an  enlarged  Eve,  no  enlarged  generation 
of  mankind  on  earth;  an  arrest  in  one  form 
£133] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

is  an  arrest  in  both,  and  in  the  upward  march 
of  the  whole  human  family^  The  truth  that, 
if  at  the  present  day,  woman,  after  her  long 
upward  march  side  by  side  with  man,  develop- 
ing with  him  through  the  ages  by  means  of 
endless  exercise  of  the  faculties  of  mind  and 
body,  has  now,  at  last,  reached  her  ultimate 
limit  of  growth,  and  can  progress  no  farther; 
that,  then,  here  also,  to-day,  the  growth  of 
the  human  spirit  is  to  be  stayed;  that  here, 
on  the  spot  of  woman's  arrest,  is  the  stand- 
ard of  the  race  to  be  finally  planted,  to  move 
forward  no  more,  forever :— that,  if  the  para- 
site woman  on  her  couch,  "loaded  with  gew- 
gaws, the  plaything  and  amusement  of  man, 
be  the  permanent  and  final  manifestation  of 
female  human  life  on  the  globe,  then  that 
couch  is  also  the  deathbed  of  human  evolu- 
tion. These  profound  underlying  truths,  per- 
haps, not  one  woman  in  twenty  thousand  of 
those  actively  engaged  in  the  struggle  for 
readjustment  has  so  closely  and  keenly 
grasped  that  she  can  readily  throw  them  into 
the  form  of  exact  language;  and  yet,  prob- 
ably, not  the  feeblest  woman  taking  share  in 
our  endeavor  toward  readjustment  and  ex- 
[134] 


PARASITISM 

pansion  fails  to  be  animated  by  a  vague  but 
profound  consciousness  of  their  existence. 
Beyond  the  small  evils,  which  she  seeks  by  her 
immediate,  personal  action  to  remedy,  lie,  she 
feels,  large  ills  of  which  they  form  but  an 
off -shoot;  beyond  the  small  good  which  she 
seeks  to  effect,  lies,  she  believes,  a  great  and 
universal  beatitude  to  be  attained;  beyond  the 
little  struggle  of  to-day,  lies  the  larger  strug- 
gle of  the  centuries,  in  which  neither  she  alone 
nor  her  sex  alone  are  concerned,  but  all  man- 
kind. 

That  such  should  be  the  mental  attitude  of 
the  average  woman  taking  part  in  the  read- 
justive  sexual  movement  of  to-day,  that  so 
often  on  the  public  platform  and  in  literature 
she  adduces  merely  secondary  arguments,  and 
is  wholly  unable  logically  to  give  an  account 
of  the  great  propelling  conditions  behind  it, 
is  sometimes  taken  as  an  indication  of  the  in- 
efficiency, and  probably  the  ultimate  failure,  of 
the  movement  in  which  she  takes  part.  But  in 
truth,  that  is  not  so.  It  is  rather  an  indica- 
tion which  shows  how  healthy,  and  deeply 
implanted  in  the  substance  of  human  life,  are 
the  roots  of  this  movement;  and  it  places  it  in 
[135] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

a  line  with  all  those  vast  controlling  move- 
ments which  have  in  the  course  of  the  ages 
reorganized  human  life. 

For  those  great  movements  which  have 
permanently  modified  the  condition  of  hu- 
manity have  never  taken  their  rise  amid  the 
chopped  logic  of  schools;  they  have  never 
drawn  their  vitality  from  a  series  of  purely 
intellectual  and  abstract  inductions.  They 
have  arisen  always  through  the  action  of 
widely  spread  material  and  spiritual  condi- 
tions, creating  widespread  human  needs; 
which,  pressing  upon  the  isolated  individuals, 
awakens  at  last  continuous,  if  often  vague  and 
uncertain,  social  movement  in  a  given  direc- 
tion. Mere  intellectual  comprehension  may 
guide,  retard,  or  accelerate  the  great  human 
movements;  it  has  never  created  them.  It 
may  even  be  questioned  whether  those  very 
leaders,  who  have  superficially  appeared  to 
create  and  organize  great  and  successful 
social  movements,  have  themselves,  in  most 
cases,  if  in  any,  fully  understood  in  all  their 
complexity  the  movements  they  themselves 
have  appeared  to  rule.  They  have  been, 
rather,  themselves  permeated  by  the  great 
[136] 


PARASITISM 

common  need;  and  being  possessed  of  more 
will,  passion,  intensity,  or  intellect,  they  have 
been  able  to  give  voice  to  that  which  in  others 
was  dumb,  and  conscious  direction  to  that 
which  in  others  was  unconscious  desire;  they 
have  been  but  the  foremost  crest  of  a  great 
wave  of  human  necessity:  they  have  not 
created  the  wave  which  bears  themselves, 
and  humanity,  onwards.  The  artificial  social 
movements  which  have  had  their  origin  in  the 
arbitrary  will  of  individuals,  guided  with  how- 
ever much  determination  and  reason,  have  of 
necessity  proved  ephemeral  and  abortive. 
An  Alexander  might  will  to  weld  a  Greece 
and  an  Asia  into  one;  a  Napoleon  might  re- 
solve to  create  of  a  diversified  Europe  one 
consolidated  state;  and  by  dint  of  skill  and 
determination  they  might  for  a  moment  ap- 
pear to  be  accomplishing  that  which  they  de- 
sired; but  the  constraining  individual  will 
being  withdrawn,  the  object  of  their  toils  has 
melted  away,  as  the  little  heap  of  damp  sand 
gathered  under  the  palm  of  a  child's  hand  on 
the  sea-shore  melts  away,  scattered  by  the 
wind  and  washed  out  by  the  waves,  the  mo- 
ment the  hand  that  shaped  it  is  withdrawn; 
[137] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

while  the  small,  soft,  indefinite,  watery  frag- 
ment of  jelly-fish  lying  beside  it,  though 
tossed  hither  and  thither  by  water  and  wind, 
yet  retains  its  shape  and  grows,  because  its 
particles  are  bound  by  an  internal  and  organic 
force. 

Our  woman's  movement  resembles  strongly, 
in  this  matter,  the  gigantic  religious  and  in- 
tellectual movement  which  for  centuries  con- 
vulsed the  life  of  Europe;  and  had,  as  its 
ultimate  outcome,  the  final  emancipation  of 
the  human  intellect  and  the  freedom  of  the 
human  spirit.  Looked  back  upon  from  the 
vantage-point  of  the  present,  it  presents  the 
appearance  of  one  vast,  steady,  persistent 
movement,  proceeding  always  in  one  ultimate 
direction,  as  though  guided  by  some  control- 
ling human  intellect.  But,  to  the  mass  of 
human  individuals  taking  part  in  it,  it  pre- 
sented an  appearance  far  otherwise.  It  was 
fought  out,  now  here,  now  there,  by  isolated 
individuals  and  small  groups,  and  often  for 
what  appeared  small  and  almost  personal 
ends,  having  sometimes,  superficially,  little  in 
common.  Now  it  was  a  Giordano  Bruno, 
burnt  in  Rome  in  defense  of  abstract  theory 
[138] 


PARASITISM 

with  regard  to  the  nature  of  the  First  Cause; 
then  an  Albigense  hurled  from  his  rocks  be- 
cause he  refused  to  part  with  the  leaves  of  his 
old  Bible ;  now  a  Dutch  peasant  woman,  walk- 
ing serenely  to  the  stake  because  she  refused 
to  bow  her  head  before  two  crossed  rods;  then 
a  Servetus  burnt  by  Protestant  Calvin  at 
Geneva;  or  a  Spinoza  cut  off  from  his  tribe 
and  people  because  he  could  see  nothing  but 
God  anywhere;  and  then  it  was  an  exiled 
Rousseau  or  Voltaire,  or  a  persecuted  Brad- 
laugh;  till,  in  our  own  day,  the  last  sounds  of 
the  long  fight  are  dying  about  us,  as  fading 
echoes,  in  the  guise  of  a  few  puerile  attempts 
to  enforce  trivial  disabilities  on  the  ground  of 
abstract  convictions.  The  vanguard  of  hu- 
manity has  won  its  battle  for  freedom  of 
thought. 

But  to  the  men  and  women  taking  part  in 
that  mighty  movement  during  the  long  cen- 
turies of  the  past,  probably  nothing  was  quite 
clear,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  but  their  own 
immediate  move.  Not  the  leaders — most  cer- 
tainly not  good  old  Martin  Luther,  even  when 
he  gave  utterance  to  his  immortal  "I  can  no 
otherwise"  (the  eternal  justification  of  all 
[139] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

reformers  and  social  innovators!),  understood 
the  whole  breadth  of  the  battlefield  on  which 
they  were  engaged,  or  grasped  with  precision 
the  issues  which  were  involved.  The  valiant 
Englishman,  who,  as  the  flames  shot  up  about 
him,  cried  to  his  companion  in  death,  "Play 
the  man,  Master  Ridley;  we  shall  by  God's 
grace  this  day  light  such  a  candle  in  England, 
as  shall  never  be  put  out!"  undoubtedly  be- 
lieved that  the  candle  lighted  was  the  mere 
tallow  rushlight  of  a  small  sectarian  freedom 
for  England  alone;  nor  perceived  that  what 
he  lighted  was  but  one  ray  of  the  vast,  uni- 
versal aurora  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
liberty,  whose  light  was  ultimately  to  stream, 
not  only  across  England,  but  across  the  earth. 
Nevertheless,  undoubtedly,  behind  all  these 
limited  efforts,  for  what  appeared,  super- 
ficially, limited  causes,  lay,  in  the  hearts  of  the 
men  and  women  concerned,  through  the  ages, 
a  profound  if  vague  consciousness  of  ends 
larger  than  they  clearly  knew,  to  be  sub- 
served by  their  action;  of  a  universal  social 
duty  and  a  great  necessity. 

That  the  woman's  movement  of  our  day 
has  not  taken  its  origin  from  any  mere  process 
[140] 


PARASITISM 

of  theoretic  argument;  that  it  breaks  out,  now 
here  and  now  there,  in  forms  divergent  and 
at  times  superficially  almost  irreconcilable; 
that  the  majority  of  those  taking  part  in  it 
are  driven  into  action  as  the  result  of  the  im- 
mediate pressure  of  the  conditions  of  life,  and 
are  not  always  able  logically  to  state  the  na- 
ture of  all  causes  which  propel  them,  or  to 
paint  clearly  all  results  of  their  action;  so  far 
from  removing  it  from  the  category  of  the 
vast  reorganizing  movements  of  humanity, 
places  it  in  a  line  with  them,  showing  how 
vital,  spontaneous,  and  wholly  organic  and 
unartificial  is  its  nature. 

The  fact  that,  at  one  point,  it  manifests 
itself  in  a  passionate,  and  at  times  almost 
incoherent,  cry  for  an  accredited  share  in 
public  and  social  duties,  while  at  another  it 
makes  itself  felt  as  a  determined  endeavor 
after  sel f -culture ;  that  in  one  land  it  em- 
bodies itself  mainly  in  a  resolute  endeavor  to 
enlarge  the  sphere  of  remunerative  labor  for 
women,  while  in  another  it  manifests  itself 
chiefly  as  an  effort  to  reco-ordinate  the  per- 
sonal relation  of  the  sexes;  that  in  one  in- 
dividual it  manifests  itself  as  a  passionate  and 
[141] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

sometimes  noisy  struggle  for  liberty  of  per- 
sonal action,  while  in  another  it  is  being 
fought  out  silently  in  the  depths  of  the  in- 
dividual consciousness — that  primal  battle- 
ground, in  which  all  questions  of  reform  and 
human  advance  must  ultimately  be  fought 
and  decided;  all  this  diversity,  and  the  fact 
that  the  average  woman  is  entirely  concerned 
in  labor  in  her  own  little  field,  shows,  not  the 
weakness,  but  the  strength  of  the  movement, 
which,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  a  movement  steady 
and  persistent  in  one  direction,  the  direction  of 
increased  activity  and  culture,  and  towards 
the  negation  of  all  possibility  of  parasitism 
in  the  human  female.  Slowly,  and  uncon- 
sciously, as  the  child  is  shaped  in  the  womb, 
this  movement  shapes  itself  in  the  bosom  of 
our  time,  taking  its  place  beside  those  vast 
human  developments,  of  which  men,  noticing 
their  spontaneity  and  the  co-ordination  of 
their  parts,  have  said,  in  the  phraseology  of 
old  days,  "This  thing  is  not  of  man,  but  of 
God." 

He  who  to-day  looks  at  some  great  Gothic 
cathedral  in  its  final  form,  seems  to  be  look- 
ing at  that  which  might  have  been  the  incar- 
[142] 


PARASITISM 

nation  of  the  dream  of  some  single  soul  of 
genius.  But  in  truth,  its  origin  was  far 
otherwise.  Ages  elapsed  from  the  time  the 
first  rough  stone  was  laid  as  a  foundation  till 
the  last  spire  and  pinnacle  were  shaped,  and 
the  hand  which  laid  the  foundation-stone  was 
never  the  same  as  that  which  set  the  last  stone 
upon  the  coping.  Generations  often  suc- 
ceeded one  another,  laboring  at  gargoyle,  rose- 
window,  and  shaft,  and  died,  leaving  the  work 
to  others ;  the  master-builder  who  drew  up  the 
first  rough  outline  passed  away,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  others,  and  the  details  of  the  work 
as  completed  bore  sometimes  but  faint  re- 
semblance to  the  work  as  he  devised  it ;  no  man 
fully  understood  all  that  others  had  done  or 
were  doing,  but  each  labored  in  his  place;  and 
the  work  as  completed  had  unity ;  it  expressed 
not  the  desire  and  necessity  of  one  mind,  but 
of  the  human  spirit  of  that  age;  and  not  less 
essential  to  the  existence  of  the  building  was 
the  labor  of  the  workman  who  passed  a  life 
of  devotion  in  carving  gargoyles  or  shaping 
rose-windows,  than  that  of  the  greatest  master 
who  drew  general  outlines :  perhaps  it  was  yet 
more  heroic;  because,  for  the  master-builder, 
[148] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

who,  even  if  but  vaguely,  has  an  image  of 
what  the  work  would  be  when  the  last  stone 
was  laid  and  the  last  spire  raised,  it  was  easy 
to  labor  with  devotion  and  zeal,  though  well 
he  might  know  that  the  placing  of  that  last 
stone  and  the  raising  of  that  last  spire  would 
not  be  his,  and  that  the  building  in  its  full 
beauty  and  strength  he  should  never  see;  but 
for  the  journeyman  laborer  who  carried  on  his 
duties  and  month  by  month  toiled  at  carving 
his  own  little  gargoyle  or  shaping  the  traceries 
in  his  own  little  oriel  window,  without  any 
complete  vision,  it  was  not  so  easy;  neverthe- 
less, it  was  through  the  conscientious  labors  of 
such  alone,  through  their  heaps  of  chipped  and 
spoiled  stones,  which  may  have  lain  thick 
about  them,  that  at  the  last  the  pile  was  reared 
in  its  strength  and  beauty. 

For  a  Moses  who  could  climb  Pisgah,  and, 
though  it  were  through  a  mist  of  bitter  tears, 
could  see  stretching  before  him  the  land  of 
the  inheritance,  a  land  which  his  feet  should 
never  tread  and  whose  fruit  his  hand  should 
never  touch,  it  was  yet,  perhaps,  not  so  hard 
to  turn  round  and  die;  for,  as  in  a  dream,  he 
had  seen  the  land;  but  for  the  thousands  who 
[144] 


PARASITISM 

could  climb  no  Pisgah,  who  were  to  leave  their 
bones  whitening  in  the  desert,  having  even 
from  afar  never  seen  the  true  outline  of  the 
land;  those  who,  on  that  long  march,  had  not 
even  borne  the  Ark  nor  struck  the  timbrel, 
but  carried  only  their  small  household  vessels 
and  possessions,  for  these  it  was  perhaps  not 
so  easy  to  lie  down  and  perish  in  the  desert, 
knowing  only  that  far  ahead  somewhere,  lay 
a  Land  of  Promise.  Nevertheless,  it  was  by 
the  slow  and  sometimes  wavering  march  of 
such  as  these,  that  the  land  was  reached  by 
the  people  at  last. 

For  her  whose  insight  enables  her  to  see, 
however  vaguely,  through  the  distance,  those 
large  beatitudes  towards  which  the  struggles 
and  suffering  of  the  women  of  to-day  may 
tend;  who  sees  beyond  the  present,  though  in 
a  future  she  knows  she  herself  will  never  en- 
ter, an  enlarged  and  strengthened  womanhood 
bearing  forward  with  it  a  strengthened  and 
expanded  race,  it  is  not  too  hard  to  renounce 
and  labor  with  unshaken  purpose;  but  for 
those  who  have  not  that  view,  and  struggle 
on,  animated  at  most  by  a  vague  conscious- 
ness that  somewhere  ahead  lies  a  large  end, 
[145] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

towards  which  their  efforts  tend;  who  labor 
on  patiently  year  after  year  at  some  poor  little 
gargoyle  of  a  Franchise  Bill,  or  the  shaping 
of  some  rough  little  foundation-stone  of  re- 
form in  education,  or  dress  a  stone  (which 
perhaps  never  quite  fits  the  spot  it  was  in- 
tended for,  and  has  to  be  thrown  aside!) ;  or 
who  carve  away  all  their  lives  to  produce  a 
corbel  of  some  new  and  beautiful  condition 
in  sexual  relations,  in  the  end  to  find  it  break 
under  the  chisel;  who,  out  of  many  failures 
attain,  perhaps,  to  no  success,  or  but  to  one, 
and  that  so  small  and  set  so  much  in  the  shade 
that  no  eye  will  ever  see  it;  for  such  as  these, 
it  is  perhaps  not  so  easy  to  labor  without 
growing  weary. 

^  Nevertheless,  it  is  through  the  labors  of 
these  myriad  toilers,  each  working  in  her 
own  minute  sphere,  with  her  own  small  out- 
look, and  out  of  endless  failures  and  miscar- 
riages, that  at  last  the  enwidened  and  beauti- 
fied relations  of  woman  to  life  must  rise,  if 
they  are  ever  to  come. 

When  a  star-fish  lies  on  the  ground  at  the 
bottom  of  a  sloping  rock  it  has  to  climb,  it 
seems  to  the  onlooker  as  though  there  were 
[146] 


PARASITISM 

nothing  which  could  stir  the  inert  mass,  and 
no  means  for  taking  it  to  the  top.  Yet  watch 
it.  Beneath  its  lower  side,  hidden  from  sight, 
are  a  million  fine  tentacles;  impulses  of  will 
from  the  center  radiate  throughout  the  whole 
body,  and  each  tiny  fiber,  fine  as  a  hair,  slowly 
extends  itself,  and  seizes  on  the  minute  par- 
ticle of  rough  rock  nearest  to  it;  now  a  small 
tentacle  slips  its  hold,  and  then  it  holds  firmly, 
and  then  slowly  the  whole  inert  mass  rises  to 
the  top. 


It  is  often  said  of  those  who  lead  in  this 
attempt  at  the  readaption  of  woman's  rela- 
tion to  life,  that  they  are  "New  Women" ;  and 
they  are  at  times  spoken  of  as  though  they 
were  a  something  portentous  and  unheard-of 
in  the  order  of  human  life. 

But,  the  truth  is,  we  are  not  new.  We- 
who  lead  in  this  movement  to-day  are  of  that 
old,  old  Teutonic  womanhood,  which  twenty 
centuries  ago  plowed  its  march  through 
European  forests  and  morasses  beside  its 
male  companion;  which  marched  with  the 
Cimbri  to  Italy,  and  with  the  Franks  across 
[U7] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  Rhine,  with  the  Varagians  into  Russia, 
and  the  Alamani  into  Switzerland;  which 
peopled  Scandinavia,  and  penetrated  to 
Britain;  whose  priestesses  had  their  shrines 
in  German  forests,  and  gave  out  the  oracle 
for  peace  or  war.  We  have  in  us  the  blood 
of  a  womanhood  that  was  never  bought  and 
never  sold;  that  wore  no  veil,  and  had  no  foot 
bound;  whose  realized  ideal  of  marriage  was 
sexual  companionship  and  an  equality  in  duty 
and  labor;  who  stood  side  by  side  with  the 
males  they  loved  in  peace  or  war,  and  whose 
children,  when  they  had  borne  them,  sucked 
manhood  from  their  breasts,  and  even  through 
their  fetal  existence  heard  a  brave  heart  beat 
above  them.  We  are  women  of  a  breed  whose 
racial  ideal  was  no  Helen  of  Troy,  passed 
passively  from  male  hand  to  male  hand,  as 
men  pass  gold  or  lead;  but  that  Brynhild 
whom  Segurd  found,  clad  in  helm  and  byrnie, 
the  warrior  maid,  who  gave  him  counsel,  "the 
deepest  that  ever  yet  was  given  to  living 
man,"  and  "wrought  on  him  to  the  perform- 
ing of  great  deeds" ;  who,  when  he  died,  raised 
high  the  funeral  pyre  and  lay  down  on  it  be- 
side him,  crying,  "Nor  shall  the  door  swing 
[148] 


PARASITISM 

to  at  the  heel  of  him  as  I  go  in  beside  him!" 
We  are  of  a  race  of  women  that  of  old  knew 
no  fear,  and  feared  no  death;  and  if  to-day 
some  of  us  have  fallen  on  evil  and  degenerate 
times,  there  moves  in  us  yet  the  throb  of  the 
old  blood.  If  it  be  to-day  on  no  physical 
battlefield  that  we  stand  beside  our  men,  and 
on  no  march  through  an  external  forest  or 
morass  that  we  have  to  lead;  it  is  yet  the  old 
spirit  which,  undimmed  by  two  thousand 
years,  stirs  within  us  in  deeper  and  subtler 
ways;  it  is  yet  the  cry  of  the  old,  free  North- 
ern woman  which  makes  the  world  to-day. 
Though  the  battle  be  now  for  us  all,  in  the 
laboratory  or  the  workshop,  in  the  forum  or 
the  study,  in  the  assembly  and  in  the  mart, 
with  the  pen  and  not  the  sword,  of  the  head 
and  not  the  arm;  we  still  stand  side  by  side' 
with  the  men  we  love,  "to  dare  with  them  in 
war  and  to  suffer  with  them  in  peace,"  as  the 
Roman  wrote  of  our  old  Northern  woman- 
hood. 

Those  women  of  whom  the  old  writers  tell 

us,    who,    barefooted    and    white    robed,    led 

their  northern  hosts  on  that  long  march  to 

Italy,  were  animated  by  the  thought  that  they 

[1*9] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

t 

led  their  people  to  a  land  of  warmer  sunshine 
and  richer  fruitage;  we,  to-day,  believe  we 
have  caught  sight  of  a  land  bathed  in  a  nobler 
than  any  material  sunlight,  with  a  fruitage 
richer  than  any  which  the  senses  only  can 
grasp.  And  behind  us,  we  believe,  there  fol- 
lows a  longer  train  than  any  composed  of  our 
own  race  and  people;  the  sound  of  the  tread 
we  hear  behind  us  is  that  of  all  earth's  women, 
bearing  within  them  the  entire  race.  The 
footpath,  yet  hardly  perceptible,  which  we 
tread  down  to-day,  will,  we  believe,  be  life's 
broadest  and  straightest  road,  along  which 
the  children  of  men  will  pass  to  a  higher  co- 
ordination and  harmony.  The  banner  which 
we  unfurl  to-day  is  not  new:  it  is  the  stand- 
ard of  the  old,  free,  monogamous  laboring 
woman,  which,  twenty  hundred  years  ago, 
floated  over  the  forests  of  Europe.  We 
shall  bear  it  on,  each  generation  as  it  falls 
passing  it  into  the  hand  of  that  which  follows, 
till  we  plant  it  so  high  that  all  nations  of  the 
world  shall  see  it;  till  the  women  of  the  hum- 
blest human  races  shall  be  gathered  beneath 
its  folds,  and  no  child  enter  life  that  was  not 
born  within  its  shade. 

[150] 


PARASITISM 

We  are  not  new!  If  you  would  under- 
stand us,  go  back  two  thousand  years,  and 
study  our  descent;  our  breed  is  our  explana- 
tion. We  are  the  daughters  of  our  fathers 
as  well  as  of  our  mothers.  In  our  dreams 
we  still  hear  the  clash  of  the  shields  of  our 
forebears  as  they  struck  them  together  be- 
fore battle  and  raised  the  shout  of  "Free- 
dom!" In  our  dreams  it  is  with  us  still,  and 
when  we  wake  it  breaks  from  our  own  lips! 
We  are  the  daughters  of  those  men. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  "Are  there  not  women 
among  you  who  would  use  the  shibboleth  of 
freedom  and  labor  merely  as  a  means  for 
opening  a  door  to  a  greater  and  more  highly 
flavored  self-indulgence,  to  a  more  lucrative 
and  enjoyable  parasitism?  Are  there  not 
women  who,  under  the  guise  of  'work,'  are 
seeking  only  increased  means  of  pleasure  and 
self-indulgence;  to  whom  intellectual  training 
and  the  opening  to  new  fields  of  labor  side 
by  side  with  man,  mean  merely  new  means  of 
self-advertisement  and  parasitic  success?" 

We  answer:  There  may  be  such  truly; 
among  us — but  not  of  us!  This  at  least  is 
true,  that  we,  ourselves,  are  seldom  deceived 
[151] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

by  them ;  the  sheep  generally  recognize  the  wolf 
however  carefully  fitted  the  sheepskin  under 
which  he  hides,  though  the  onlookers  may  not ; 
and  though  the  sheep  may  not  always  be  able 
to  drive  him  from  the  flock!  The  outer  world 
may  be  misled;  we,  who  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  them,  know  them;  they  are  not 
many;  neither  are  they  new.  They  are  one 
of  the  oldest  survivals,  and  among  the  most 
primitive  relics  in  the  race.  They  are  as  old 
as  Loki  among  the  gods,  as  Lucifer  among 
the  Sons  of  the  Morning,  as  the  serpent  in  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  as  pain  and  dislocation  in 
web  of  human  life. 

Such  women  are  as  old  as  that  first  primi- 
tive woman  who,  when  she  went  with  her  fel- 
lows to  gather  wood  for  the  common  house- 
hold, put  grass  in  the  center  of  the  bundle 
that  she  might  appear  to  carry  as  much  as 
they,  yet  carry  nothing;  she  is  as  old  as  the 
first  man  who  threw  away  his  shield  in  battle, 
and  yet,  when  it  was  over,  gathered  with  the 
victors  to  share  the  spoils;  as  old  as  cowardice 
and  lust  in  the  human  and  animal  world; 
only  to  cease  from  being  when,  perhaps,  an 
[153] 


PARASITISM 

enlarged  and  expanded  humanity  shall  have 
cast  the  last  slough  of  its  primitive  skin. 

Every  army  has  its  camp-followers,  not 
among  its  accredited  soldiers,  but  who  follow 
in  its  train,  ready  to  attack  and  rifle  the  fallen 
on  either  side.  To  lookers-on,  they  may  ap- 
pear soldiers;  but  the  soldier  knows  who  they 
are.  At  the  Judean  supper  there  was  one 
Master,  and  to  the  onlooker  there  may  have 
seemed  twelve  apostles;  in  truth  only  twelve 
were  of  the  company,  and  one  was  not  of  it. 
There  has  always  been  this  thirteenth  figure 
at  every  sacramental  gathering,  since  the 
world  began,  wherever  the  upholders  of  a 
great  cause  have  broken  spiritual  bread;  but 
it  may  be  questioned  whether  in  any  instance 
this  thirteenth  figure  has  been  able  to  destroy, 
or  even  vitally  to  retard,  any  great  human 
movement.  Judas  could  betray  his  Master  by 
a  kiss ;  but  he  could  not  silence  the  voice  which 
for  a  thousand  years  rang  out  of  that  Judean 
grave.  Again  and  again,  in  social,  political, 
and  intellectual  movements,  the  betrayer  be- 
trays ;  and  the  cause  marches  on  over  the  body 
of  the  man. 

[153] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

There  are  women,  as  there  are  men,  whose 
political,  social,  intellectual,  or  philanthropic 
labors  are  put  on,  as  the  harlot  puts  on  paint, 
and  for  the  same  purpose,  but  they  can  no 
more  retard  the  progress  of  the  great  bulk 
of  vital  and  sincere  womanhood,  than  the  drift- 
wood on  the  surface  of  a  mighty  river  can 
ultimately  prevent  its  waters  from  reaching 
the  sea. 


[154] 


WOMAN  AND  WAR 


CHAPTER  IV 

WOMAN   AND   WAS 

IT  may  also  be  said,  "Granting  fully  that 
you  are  right,  that,  as  woman's  old  fields  of 
labor  slip  from  her,  she  must  grasp  new,  or 
must  become  wholly  dependent  on  her  sex- 
ual function  alone,  all  the  other  elements  of 
human  nature  in  her  becoming  atrophied 
and  arrested  through  lack  of  exercise,  and 
granting  that  her  evolution  being  arrested, 
the  evolution  of  the  whole  race  will  be 
also  arrested  in  her  person;  granting  all  this 
to  the  full,  and  allowing  that  the  bulk  of  hu- 
man labor  tends  to  become  more  and  more 
intellectual  and  less  and  less  purely  mechan- 
ical as  perfected  machinery  takes  the  place  of 
crude  human  exertion;  and  that  therefore  if 
woman  is  to  be  saved  from  degeneration  and 
parasitism,  and  the  body  of  humanity  from 
arrest,  she  must  receive  a  training  which  will 
cultivate  all  the  intellectual  and  all  the  phys- 
[157] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

ical  faculties  and  be  allowed  freely  to  em- 
ploy them;  nevertheless,  would  it  not  be  pos- 
sible, and  be  well,  that  a  dividing  line  of  some 
kind  should  be  drawn  between  the  occupa- 
tions of  men  and  of  women?  Would  it  not  be 
possible  that  woman  should  retain  agricul- 
ture, textile  manufactory,  trade,  domestic 
management,  the  education  of  youth,  and 
medicine,  in  addition  to  child-bearing,  as  her 
exclusive  fields  of  toil;  while  to  the  male 
should  be  left  the  study  of  abstract  science, 
law  and  war,  and  statecraft;  as  of  old,  man 
took  war  and  the  chase,  and  woman  absorbed 
the  further  labors  of  life?  Why  should  there 
not  be  again  a  fair  and  even  division  in  the 
field  of  social  labor?" 

Superficially,  this  suggestion  appears  ra- 
tional, having  at  least  this  to  recommend  it, 
that  it  appears  to  harmonize  with  the  course 
of  human  evolution  in  the  past;  but  closely 
examined,  it  will,  we  think,  be  found  to  have 
no  practical  or  scientific  basis,  and  to  be  out 
of  harmony  with  the  conditions  of  modern 
life.  In  ancient  and  primitive  societies,  the 
mere  larger  size  and  muscular  strength  of 
man  in  certain  mechanical  directions,  and 
[158] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

woman's  incessant  physical  activity  in  child- 
bearing  and  suckling,  made  almost  inevita- 
ble such  a  sexual  division  of  labor  in  almost 
all  countries,  save  perhaps  in  ancient  Egypt.1 
Woman  naturally  took  the  heavy  agricultural 
and  domestic  labors,  which  were  yet  more  con- 
sistent with  the  continual  dependence  of  in- 
fant life  on  her  own,  than  those  of  man  in 
war  and  the  chase.  There  was  nothing  arti- 
ficial in  such  a  division;  it  threw  the  heaviest 
burden  of  the  most  wearying  and  unexciting 
forms  of  social  labor  on  woman,  but  under  it 
both  sexes  labored,  and  each  transmitted  to 
the  other,  through  inheritance,  the  fruit  of 
its  slowly  expanding  and  always  exerted 
powers ;  and  the  race  progressed. 

Individual  women  might  sometimes,  and 
even  often,  become  the  warriors  or  chiefs  of 
tribes;  the  King  of  Ashantee  might  train  his 
terrible  regiment  of  females;  and  men  might 
now  and  again  plant  and  weave  for  their 
children:  but  in  the  main,  and  in  most  socie- 
ties, the  division  of  labor  was  just,  natural, 

1  The  division  of  labor  between  the  sexes  in  Ancient  Egypt 
and  other  exceptional  countries,  is  a  matter  of  much  interest, 
which  cannot  here  be  entered  on. 

[159] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

beneficial,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  such  a 
division  should  take  place.  Were  to-day  a 
band  of  civilized  men,  women,  and  infants 
thrown  down  absolutely  naked  and  defense- 
less in  some  desert,  and  cut  off  hopelessly 
from  all  external  civilized  life,  undoubtedly 
very  much  the  old  division  of  labor  would,  at 
least  for  a  time,  reassert  itself.  Men  would 
look  about  for  stones  and  sticks  with  which  to 
make  weapons,  with  which  to  repel  wild  beasts 
and  enemies,  and  would  go  a-hunting  meat 
and  tend  the  beasts  when  tamed ; l  women 
would  suckle  their  children,  cook  the  meat 
men  brought,  build,  shelters,  look  for  roots 
and  if  possible  cultivate  them.  There  certainly 
would  be  no  parasite  in  the  society.  The 
woman  who  refused  to  labor  for  her  offspring, 
and  the  man  who  refused  to  hunt  or  defend 
society  would  not  be  supported  by  their  fel- 
lows, would  soon  be  extinguished  by  want. 
As  wild  beasts  were  extinguished  and  others 
tamed  and  the  materials  for  war  improved, 
fewer  men  would  be  needed  for  hunting  and 
war;  then  they  would  remain  at  home  and  aid 

1  The  young  captured  animals  would  probably  be  tamed  and 
reared  by  the  women. 

[160] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

in  building  and  planting;  many  women  would 
retire  into  the  house  to  perfect  domestic  toil 
and  handicrafts,  and  on  a  small  scale  the 
common  ancient  evolution  of  society  would 
practically  repeat  itself.  But  for  the  present 
we  see  no  such  natural  and  spontaneous  di- 
vision of  labor  based  on  natural  sexual  dis- 
tinctions in  the  new  fields  of  intellectual  or 
delicately  skilled  manual  labor,  which  are 
taking  the  place  of  the  old. 

It  is  possible,  though  at  present  there  is 
nothing  to  give  indication  of  such  a  fact,  and 
it  seems  highly  improbable,  that,  in  some 
subtle  manner  now  incomprehensible,  there 
might  tend  to  be  a  subtle  correlation  between 
that  condition  of  the  brain  and  nervous  sys- 
tem which  accompanies  ability  in  the  direction 
of  certain  forms  of  mental,  social  labor  and 
the  particular  form  of  reproductive  function 
possessed  by  an  individual.  It  may  be  that, 
inexplicable  as  it  seems,  there  may  ultimately 
be  found  to  be  some  connection  between  that 
condition  of  the  brain  and  nervous  system 
which  fits  the  individual  for  the  study  of  the 
higher  mathematics,  let  us  say,  and  the  nature 
of  their  sex  attributes.  The  mere  fact  that,  of 
[161] 


the  handful  of  women  who,  up  to  the  present, 
have  received  training  and  been  allowed  to 
devote  themselves  to  abstract  study,  several 
have  excelled  in  the  higher  mathematics, 
proves  of  necessity  no  pre-eminent  tendency 
on  the  part  of  the  female  sex  in  the  direction 
of  mathematics,  as  compared  to  labor  in  the 
fields  of  statesmanship,  administration,  or  law, 
as  into  these  fields,  there  has  been  practically 
no  admittance  for  women.  It  is  sometimes 
stated,  that  as  several  women  of  genius  in 
modern  times  have  sought  to  find  expression 
for  their  creative  powers  in  the  art  of  fiction, 
there  must  be  some  inherent  connection  in 
the  human  brain  between  the  ovarian  sex 
function  and  the  art  of  fiction.  The  fact  is 
that  modern  fiction,  being  merely  a  descrip- 
tion of  human  life  in  any  of  its  phases,  and 
being  the  only  art  that  can  be  exercised  with- 
out special  training  or  special  appliances, 
and  produced  in  the  moments  stolen  from 
the  multifarious,  brain-destroying  occupations 
which  fill  the  average  woman's  life,  they  have 
been  driven  to  find  this  outlet  for  their  pow- 
ers as  the  only  one  presenting  itself.  How 
far  otherwise  might  have  been  the  directions 
[162] 


WOMAN   AND   WAR 

in  which  their  genius  would  naturally  have 
expressed  itself  can  be  known  only  to  the 
women  themselves;  what  the  world  has  lost 
by  that  compulsory  expression  of  genius,  in 
a  form  which  may  not  have  been  its  most  nat- 
ural form  of  expression,  or  only  one  of  its 
forms,  no  one  can  ever  know.  Even  in  the 
little  third-rate  novelist  whose  works  cumber 
the  ground,  we  see  often  a  pathetic  figure  when 
we  recognize  that  beneath  that  failure  in  a 
complex  and  difficult  art,  may  lie  buried  a 
sound  legislator,  an  able  architect,  an  orig- 
inal scientific  investigator,  or  a  good  judge. 
Scientifically  speaking,  it  is  as  unproven  that 
there  is  any  organic  relation  between  the  brain 
of  the  female  and  the  production  of  art  in  the 
form  of  fiction,  as  that  there  is  an  organic  re- 
lation between  the  hand  of  woman  and  the 
typewriter.  Both  the  creative  writer  and  the 
typist,  in  their  respective  spheres,  are  merely 
finding  outlets  for  their  powers  in  the  direc- 
tion of  least  mental  resistance.  The  tendency 
of  women  at  the  present  day  to  undertake 
certain  forms  of  labor  proves  only  that  in  the 
crabbed,  walled-in,  and  bound  conditions  sur- 
rounding woman  at  the  present  day,  these  are 
[163] 


WOMAN   AND   LABOR 

the  lines  along  which  action  is  most  possible 
to  her. 

It  may  possibly  be  that,  in  future  ages, 
when  the  male  and  female  forms  have  been 
placed  in  like  intellectual  conditions,  with  like 
stimuli,  like  trainings  and  like  rewards,  some 
aptitudes  may  be  found  running  parallel  with 
the  line  of  sex  function  when  humanity  is 
viewed  as  a  whole.  It  may  possibly  be  that, 
when  the  historian  of  the  future  looks  back 
over  the  history  of  the  intellectually  freed  and 
active  sexes  for  many  generations,  a  decided 
preference  of  the  female  intellect  for  mathe- 
matics, engineering,  or  statecraft  may  be 
made  clear;  and  that  a  like  marked  inclina- 
tion in  the  male  to  excel  in  acting,  music,  or  as- 
tronomy may  by  careful  and  large  compar- 
ison be  shown.  But,  for  the  present,  we  have 
no  adequate  scientific  data  from  which  to 
draw  any  conclusion,  and  any  attempt  to  di- 
vide the  occupations  in  which  male  and  fe- 
male intellects  and  wills  should  be  employed, 
must  be  to  attempt  a  purely  artificial  and  arbi- 
trary division :  a  division  not  more  rational  and 
scientific  than  an  attempt  to  determine  by  the 
color  of  his  eyes  and  the  shape  and  strength  of 
[164] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

his  legs,  whether  a  lad  should  be  an  astronomer 
or  an  engraver. 

Those  physical  differences  among  mankind 
which  divide  races  and  nations — not  merely 
those  differences,  enormously  greater  as  they 
are  generally,  than  any  physical  differences 
between  male  and  female  of  the  same  race 
which  divide  the  Jew  and  the  Swede,  the  Jap- 
anese and  the  Englishman,  but  even  those 
subtle  physical  differences  which  divide 
closely  allied  races  such  as  the  English  and 
German — often  appear  to  be  allied  with  subtle 
differences  in  intellectual  aptitudes.  Yet 
even  with  regard  to  these  differences,  it  is  al- 
most impossible  to  determine  scientifically  in 
how  far  they  are  the  result  of  national  tradi- 
tions, environment,  and  education,  and  in 
how  far  they  run  parallel  with  the  differences 
in  physical  conformation.1 

*  In  thinking  of  physical  sex  differences,  the  civilized  man  of 
modern  times  has  always  to  guard  himself  against  being  un- 
consciously misled  by  the  very  exaggerated  external  sex  differ- 
ences which  our  unnatural  method  of  sex  clothing  and  dressing 
the  hair  produces.  The  unclothed  and  natural  human  male 
and  female  bodies  are  not  more  divided  from  each  other  than 
those  of  the  lion  and  lioness.  Our  remote  Saxon  ancestors, 
with  their  great  white  bodies  and  flowing  hair  worn  long  by 
both  sexes,  were  but  little  distinguished  from  each  other;  while 

[165] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

No  study  of  the  mere  physical  differences 
between  individuals  of  different  races  would 
have  enabled  us  to  arrive  at  any  knowledge 
of  their  mental  aptitude;  nor  does  the  fact 
that  certain  individuals  of  a  given  human  va- 
riety have  certain  aptitudes  form  a  rational 
ground  for  compelling  all  individuals  of  that 
variety  to  undertake  a  certain  form  of  labor. 

No  analysis,  however  subtle,  of  the  physical 
conformation  of  the  Jew  could  have  suggested 
a  priori,  and  still  less  could  have  proved, 
apart  from  ages  of  practical  experience,  that, 
running  parallel  with  any  physical  character- 
istics which  may  distinguish  him  from  his  fel- 
lows, was  an  innate  and  unique  intellectual 

among  their  modern  descendants  the  short  haired,  darkly 
clothed,  manifestly  two-legged  male  differs  absolutely  from  the 
usually  long-haired,  color  bedizened,  much  skirted  female. 
Were  the  structural  differences  between  male  and  female  really 
one-half  as  marked  as  the  artificial  visual  differences,  they 
would  be  greater  than  those  dividing,  not  merely  any  species  of 
man  from  each  other,  but  as  great  as  those  which  divide  orders 
in  the  animal  world.  Only  a  mind  exceedingly  alert  and  ana- 
lytical can  fail  ultimately  to  be  misled  by  habitual  visual  mis- 
representation. There  is  not,  probably,  one  man  or  woman  in 
twenty  thousand  who  is  not  powerfully  influenced  in  modern 
life  in  their  conception  of  the  differences,  physical  and  intel- 
lectual, dividing  the  human  male  and  female,  by  the  grotesque 
exaggerations  of  modern  attire  and  artificial  manners. 

[166] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

gift  in  the  direction  of  religion.  The  fact 
that,  during  three  thousand  years,  from  Moses 
to  Isaiah,  through  Jesus  and  Paul,  on  to 
Spinoza,  the  Jewish  race  has  produced  men 
who  have  given  half  the  world  its  religious 
faith  and  impetus,  proves  that,  somewhere 
and  somehow,  whether  connected  organically 
with  that  physical  organization  that  marks  the 
Jew,  or  as  the  result  of  his  traditions  and 
training,  there  does  go  this  gift  in  the  matter 
of  religion.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find 
millions  of  Jews  who  are  totally  and  mark- 
edly deficient  in  it,  and  to  base  any  practical 
legislation  for  the  individual  even  on  this 
proven  intellectual  aptitude  of  the  race  as 
a  whole  would  be  manifestly  as  ridiculous  as 
abortive. 

Yet  more  markedly,  with  the  German — 
no  consideration  of  his  physical  peculiarities, 
though  it  proceeded  to  the  subtlest  analysis 
of  nerve,  bone,  and  muscle,  could  in  the  pres- 
ent stage  of  our  knowledge  have  proved  to 
us  what  generations  of  experience  appear  to 
have  proved,  that,  with  that  organization 
which  constitutes  the  German,  goes  a  unique 
aptitude  for  music.  There  is  always  the 
[167] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

possibility  of  mistaking  the  result  of  train- 
ing and  external  circumstance  for  inherent 
tendency,  but  when  we  consider  the  passion 
for  music  which  the  German  has  shown,  and 
when  we  consider  that  the  greatest  musicians 
the  world  has  seen,  from  Bach,  Beethoven, 
and  Mozart  to  Wagner,  have  been  of  that 
race,  it  appears  highly  probable  that  such  a 
correlation  between  the  German  organization 
and  the  intellectual  gift  of  music  does  exist. 
Similar  intellectual  peculiarities  seem  to  be 
connoted  by  the  external  differences  which 
mark  off  other  races  from  each  other.  Nev- 
ertheless, if  persons  of  all  of  these  nation- 
alities gathered  in  one  colony,  any  attempt  to 
legislate  for  their  restriction  to  certain  forms 
of  intellectual  labor  on  the  ground  of  their 
apparently  proved  national  aptitudes  or  dis- 
abilities, would  be  regarded  as  insane.  To 
insist  that  all  Jews,  and  none  but  Jews,  should 
lead  and  instruct  in  religious  matters;  that 
all  Englishmen,  and  none  but  Englishmen, 
should  engage  in  trade;  that  each  German 
should  make  his  living  by  music,  and  none  but 
a  German  allowed  to  practise  it,  would  drive 
to  despair  the  unfortunate  individual  Eng- 
[168] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

lishman,  whose  most  marked  deficiency  might 
be  in  the  direction  of  finance  and  bartering 
trade  power;  the  Jew,  whose  religious  in- 
stincts might  be  entirely  rudimentary;  or  the 
German,  who  could  not  distinguish  one  note 
from  another ;  and  the  society  as  a  whole  would 
be  an  irremediable  loser,  in  one  of  the  heaviest 
of  all  forms  of  social  loss — the  loss  of  the  full 
use  of  the  highest  capacities  of  all  its  mem- 
bers. 

It  may  be  that  with  sexes  as  with  races,  the 
subtlest  physical  differences  between  them  may 
have  their  mental  correlatives ;  but  no  abstract 
consideration  of  the  human  body  in  relation  to 
its  functions  of  sex  can,  in  the  present  state 
of  our  knowledge,  show  us  what  intellectual 
capacities  tend  to  vary  with  sexual  structure, 
and  nothing  in  the  present  or  past  condition  of 
male  or  female  gives  us  more  than  the  very 
faintest  possible  indication  of  the  relation  of 
their  intellectual  aptitudes  and  their  sexual 
functions.  And  even  if  it  were  proved  by  cen- 
turies of  experiment  that  with  the  possession 
of  the  uterine  function  of  sex  tends  to  go  ex- 
ceptional intellectual  capacity  in  the  direction 
of  mathematics  rather  than  natural  history, 
[169] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

or  an  inclination  for  statecraft  rather  than 
for  mechanical  invention;  were  it  proved  that, 
generally  speaking  and  as  a  whole,  out  of 
twenty  thousand  women  devoting  themselves 
to  law  and  twenty  thousand  to  medicine,  they 
tended  to  achieve  relatively  more  in  the  field  of 
law  than  of  medicine,  there  would  yet  be  no 
possible  healthy  or  rational  ground  for  restrict- 
ing the  activities  of  the  individual  female  to 
that  line  in  which  the  average  female  ap- 
peared rather  more  frequently  to  excel.1 

That  even  one  individual  in  a  society  should 
be  debarred  from  undertaking  that  form  of 
social  toil  for  which  it  is  most  fitted,  makes  an 
unnecessary  deficit  in  the  general  social  as- 
sets. That  one  male  Froebel  should  be  pro- 
hibited or  hampered  in  his  labor  as  an  edu- 
cator of  infancy,  on  the  ground  that  infantile 
instruction  was  the  field  of  the  female;  that 

i  Minds  not  keenly  analytical  are  always  apt  to  mistake  mere 
correlation  of  appearance  with  causative  sequence.  We  have 
heard  it  gravely  asserted  that  between  potatoes,  pigs,  mud 
cabins,  and  Irishmen  there  was  an  organic  connection:  but  we 
who  have  lived  in  Colonies  know  that  within  two  generations 
the  pure-bred  descendant  of  the  mud  cabin  becomes  often  the 
successful  politician,  wealthy  financier,  or  great  judge;  and 
shows  no  more  predilection  for  potatoes,  pigs,  and  mud  cabins 
than  men  of  any  other  race. 

[170] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

one  female  with  gifts  in  the  direction  of  state 
administration,  should  be  compelled  to  in- 
struct an  infants'  school,  perhaps  without  any 
gift  for  so  doing,  is  a  running  to  waste  of 
social  lifeblood. 

Free  trade  in  labor  and  equality  of  train- 
ing, intellectual  or  physical,  is  essential  if  the 
organic  aptitudes  of  a  sex  or  class  are  to  be 
determined.  And  our  demand  to-day  is  that 
natural  conditions,  inexorably,  but  benefi- 
cently, may  determine  the  labors  of  each  indi- 
vidual, and  not  artificial  restrictions. 

As  there  is  no  need  to  legislate  that  Hindus, 
being  generally  supposed  to  have  a  natural 
incapacity  for  field  sports,  shall  not  betake 
themselves  to  them — for,  if  they  have  no  ca- 
pacity, they  will  fail;  and,  as  in  spite  of  the 
Hindus'  supposed  general  incapacity  for 
sport,  it  is  possible  for  an  individual  Hindu 
to  become  the  noted  batsman  of  his  age;  so, 
there  is  no  need  to  legislate  that  women  should 
be  restricted  in  her  choice  of  fields  of  labor; 
for  the  organic  incapacity  of  the  individual, 
if  it  exist,  will  legislate  far  more  strongly 
than  any  artificial,  legal,  or  social  obstruction 
can  do;  and  it  may  be  that  the  one  individual 
[171] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

in  ten  thousand  who  selects  a  field  not  gen- 
erally sought  by  their  fellows  will  enrich 
humanity  by  the  result  of  an  especial  genius. 
Allowing  all  to  start  from  the  one  point  in 
the  world  of  intellectual  culture  and  labor, 
with  our  ancient  Mother  Nature  sitting  as 
umpire,  distributing  the  prizes  and  scratching 
from  the  lists  the  incompetent,  is  all  we 
demand,  but  we  demand  it  determinedly. 
Throw  the  puppy  into  the  water:  if  it  swims, 
well;  if  it  sinks,  well;  but  do  not  tie  a  rope 
round  its  throat  and  weight  it  with  a  brick, 
and  then  assert  its  incapacity  to  keep  afloat. 

For  the  present,  we  take  all  labor  for  our 
province! 

From  the  judge's  seat  to  the  legislator's 
chair;  from  the  statesman's  closet  to  the  mer- 
chant's office;  from  the  chemist's  laboratory 
to  the  astronomer's  tower,  there  is  no  post  or 
form  of  toil  for  which  it  is  not  our  intention 
to  attempt  to  fit  ourselves;  and  there  is  no 
closed  door  we  do  not  intend  to  force  open; 
and  there  is  no  fruit  in  the  garden  of  knowl- 
edge it  is  not  our  determination  to  eat.  Act- 
ing in  us,  and  through  us,  nature  will  merci- 
lessly expose  to  us  our  deficiencies  in  the  field 
[172] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

of  human  toil  and  reveal  to  us  our  powers. 
And,  for  to-day,  we  take  att  labor  for  our 
province! 

But,  it  may  be  said:  "What  then  of  war, 
that  struggle  of  the  human  creature  to  attain 
its  ends  by  physical  force  and  at  the  price  of 
the  life  of  others:  will  you  take  part  in  that 
also?"  We  reply:  Yes;  more  particularly  in 
that  field  we  intend  to  play  our  part.  We 
have  always  borne  part  of  the  weight  of  war, 
and  the  major  part.  It  is  not  that  in  prim- 
itive times  we  suffered  from  the  destruction 
of  the  fields  we  tilled  and  the  houses  we  built ; 
it  is  not  that  later  as  domestic  laborers  and 
producers,  though  unwaged,  we,  in  taxes  and 
material  loss  and  additional  labor,  paid  as 
much  as  our  male  towards  the  cost  of  war; 
it  is  not  that  in  a  comparatively  insignificant 
manner,  as  nurses  of  the  wounded  in  modern 
times,  or  now  and  again  as  warrior  chieftain- 
esses  and  leaders  in  primitive  and  other  so- 
cieties, we  have  borne  our  part;  nor  is  it  even 
because  the  spirit  of  resolution  in  its  women, 
and  their  willingness  to  endure,  has  in  all  ages, 
again  and  again  largely  determined  the  fate 
of  a  race  that  goes  to  war,  that  we  demand 
[173] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

our  controlling  right  where  war  is  concerned. 
Our  relation  to  war  is  far  more  intimate,  per- 
sonal, and  indissoluble  than  this.  Men  have 
made  boomerangs,  bows,  swords,  or  guns  with 
which  to  destroy  one  another;  we  have  made 
the  men  who  destroyed  and  were  destroyed! 
We  have  in  all  ages  produced,  at  an  enormous 
cost,  the  primal  munition  of  war,  without  which 
no  other  would  exist.  There  is  no  battlefield 
on  earth,  nor  ever  has  been,  howsoever  covered 
with  slain,  which  it  has  not  cost  the  women  of 
the  race  more  in  actual  bloodshed  and  anguish 
to  supply,  than  it  has  cost  the  men  who  lie 
there.  We  pay  the  first  cost  on  all  human 
life. 

In  supplying  the  men  for  the  carnage  of  a 
battlefield,  women  have  not  merely  lost  actu- 
ally more  blood,  and  gone  through  a  more 
acute  anguish  and  weariness,  in  the  long 
months  of  bearing  and  in  the  final  agony  of 
child-birth,  than  has  been  experienced  by  the 
men  who  cover  it;  but,  in  the  long  months  of 
rearing  that  follow,  the  women  of  the  race  go 
through  a  long,  patiently  endured  strain  which 
no  knapsacked  soldier  on  his  longest  march 
has  ever  more  than  equalled;  while,  even  in  the 
[174] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

matter  of  death,  in  all  civilized  societies,  the 
probability  that  the  average  woman  will  die  in 
child-birth  is  immeasurably  greater  than  the 
probability  that  the  average  male  will  die  in 
battle. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  woman,  whether  she 
have  borne  children,  or  be  merely  potentially 
a  child-bearer,  who  could  look  down  upon  a 
battlefield  covered  with  slain,  but  the  thought 
would  rise  in  her,  "So  many  mothers'  sons  I 
So  many  young  bodies  brought  into  the  world 
to  lie  there!  So  many  months  of  weariness 
and  pain  while  bones  and  muscles  were  shaped 
within  I  So  many  hours  of  anguish  and  strug- 
gle that  breath  might  be!  So  many  baby 
mouths  drawing  life  at  women's  breasts; — all 
this,  that  men  might  lie  with  glazed  eyeballs, 
and  swollen  faces,  and  fixed,  blue,  unclosed 
mouths,  and  great  limbs  tossed — this,  that  an 
acre  of  ground  might  be  manured  with  human 
flesh,  that  next  year's  grass  or  poppies  or 
karoo  bushes  may  spring  up  greener  and 
redder,  where  they  have  lain,  or  that  the  sand 
of  a  plain  may  have  a  glint  of  white  bones!" 
And  we  cry,  "Without  an  inexorable  cause, 
this  must  not  be!"  No  woman  who  is  a 
[175] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

woman  says  of  a  human  body,  "It  is  noth- 
ing!" 

On  that  day  when  the  woman  takes  her 
place  beside  the  man  in  the  governance  and  ar- 
rangement of  external  affairs  of  her  race  will 
also  be  that  day  that  heralds  the  death  of  war 
as  a  means  of  arranging  human  differences. 
No  tinsel  of  trumpets  and  flags  will  ultimately 
seduce  women  into  the  insanity  of  recklessly 
destroying  life,  or  gild  the  willful  taking  of 
life  with  any  other  name  than  that  of  murder, 
whether  it  be  the  slaughter  of  the  million  or  of 
one  by  one.  And  this  will  be,  not  because  with 
the  sexual  function  of  maternity  necessarily 
goes  in  the  human  creature  a  deeper  moral  in- 
sight, or  a  loftier  type  of  social  instinct  than 
that  which  accompanies  the  paternal.  Men 
have  in  all  ages  led  as  nobly  as  women  in  many 
paths  of  heroic  virtue,  and  toward  the  higher 
social  sympathies;  in  certain  ages,  being  freer 
and  more  widely  cultured,  they  have  led 
further  and  better.  The  fact  that  woman  has 
no  inherent  all-round  moral  superiority  over 
her  male  companion,  or  naturally  on  all  points 
any  higher  social  instinct,  is  perhaps  most 
clearly  exemplified  by  one  curious  very  small 
[176] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

fact:  the  two  terms  signifying  intimate  human 
relationships  which  in  almost  all  human  lan- 
guages bear  the  most  sinister  and  antisocial 
significance  are  both  terms  which  have  as  their 
root  the  term  "mother,"  and  denote  feminine 
relationships — the  words  "mother-in-law"  and 
"step-mother." 

In  general  humanity,  in  the  sense  of  social 
solidarity,  and  in  magnanimity,  the  male  has 
continually  proved  himself  at  least  the  equal  of 
the  female. 

Nor  will  women  shrink  from  war  because 
they  lack  courage.  Earth's  women  of  every 
generation  have  faced  suffering  and  death  with 
an  equanimity  that  no  soldier  on  a  battlefield 
has  ever  surpassed  and  few  have  equalled ;  and 
where  war  has  been  to  preserve  life,  or  land,  or 
freedom,  rather  than  for  aggrandisement  and 
power,  unparasitised  and  laboring  women  have 
in  all  ages  known  how  to  bear  an  active  part, 
and  die. 

Nor  will  woman's  influence  militate  against 
war  because  in  the  future  woman  will  not  be 
able  physically  to  bear  her  part  in  it.  The 
smaller  size  of  her  muscle,  which  might 
severely  have  disadvantaged  her  when  war  was 
[177] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

conducted  with  a  battle-axe  or  sword  and  hand 
to  hand,  would  now  little  or  not  at  all  affect 
her.  If  intent  on  training  for  war,  she  might 
acquire  the  skill  for  guiding  a  Maxim  or  shoot- 
ing down  a  foe  with  a  Lee-Metford  at  four 
thousand  yards  as  ably  as  any  male;  and  un- 
doubtedly, it  has  not  been  only  the  peasant  girl 
of  France,  who  has  carried  latent  and  hid  in 
her  person  the  gifts  that  would  make  the  great 
general.  If  our  European  nations  should  con- 
tinue in  their  present  semi-civilized  condition 
a  few  generations  longer,  it  is  highly  probable 
that  as  financiers,  as  managers  of  the  commis- 
sariat department,  as  inspectors  of  provisions 
and  clothing  for  the  army,  women  may  prob- 
ably play  a  very  leading  part ;  and  that  the  na- 
tion which  is  the  first  to  employ  women  may 
be  placed  at  a  vast  advantage  over  its  fellows 
in  time  of  war.  It  is  not  because  of  woman's 
cowardice,  incapacity,  nor,  above  all,  because 
of  her  general  superior  virtue,  that  she  will  end 
war  when  her  voice  is  fully  and  clearly  heard 
in  the  governance  of  states — it  is  because,  on 
this  one  point,  and  on  this  point  almost  alone, 
the  knowledge  of  woman,  simply  as  woman,  is 
[178] 


WOMAN   AND    WAR 

superior  to  that  of  man ;  she  knows  the  history 
of  human  flesh;  she  knows  its  cost;  he  does 
not.1 

In  a  besieged  city,  it  might  well  happen  that 
men  in  the  streets  might  seize  upon  statues 
and  marble  carvings  from  public  buildings  and 
galleries  and  hurl  them  in  to  stop  the  breaches 
made  in  their  ramparts  by  the  enemy,  uncon- 
sideringly  and  merely  because  they  came  first 
to  hand,  not  valuing  them  more  than  had  they 
been  paving-stones.  One  man,  however,  could 
not  do  this — the  sculptor.  He,  who,  though 
there  might  be  no  work  of  his  own  chisel  among 
them,  yet  knew  what  each  of  these  works  of  art 
had  cost,  knew  by  experience  the  long  years  of 
struggle  and  study  and  the  infinitude  of  toil 
which  had  gone  to  the  shaping  of  even  one 
limb,  to  the  carving  of  even  one  perfected  out- 
line, he  could  never  so  use  them  without 
thought  or  care.  Instinctively  he  would  seek 

*  It  is  noteworthy  that  even  Catherine  of  Russia,  a  ruler  and 
statesman  of  a  virile  and  uncompromising  type,  and  not  usually 
troubled  with  moral  scruples,  yet  refused  with  indignation  the 
offer  of  Frederick  of  Prussia  to  pay  her  heavily  for  a  small 
number  of  Russian  recruits  in  an  age  when  the  hiring  out  of 
soldiers  was  common  among  the  sovereigns  of  Europe. 

[179] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

to  throw  in  household  goods,  even  gold  and 
silver,  all  the  city  held,  before  he  sacrificed  its 
works  of  art! 

Men's  bodies  are  our  woman's  works  of  art. 
Given  to  us  power  to  control,  we  will  never 
carelessly  throw  them  in  to  fill  up  the  gaps  in 
human  relationships  made  by  international 
ambitions  and  greeds.  The  thought  would 
never  come  to  us  as  women,  "Cast  in  men's 
bodies;  settle  the  thing  sol"  Arbitration  and 
compensation  would  as  naturally  occur  to  her 
as  cheaper  and  simpler  methods  of  bridging 
the  gaps  in  national  relationships,  as  to  the 
sculptor  it  would  occur  to  throw  in  anything 
rather  than  statuary,  though  he  might  be 
driven  to  that  at  last ! 

This  is  one  of  those  phases  of  human  life, 
not  very  numerous,  but  very  important,  to- 
wards which  the  man  as  man,  and  the  woman 
as  woman,  on  the  mere  ground  of  their  differ- 
ent sexual  function  with  regard  to  reproduc- 
tion, stand,  and  must  stand,  at  a  somewhat  dif- 
fering angle.  The  physical  creation  of  human 
life,  which,  in  as  far  as  the  male  is  concerned, 
consists  in  a  few  moments  of  physical  pleasure, 
to  the  female  must  always  signify  months  of 
[180] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

pressure  and  physical  endurance,  crowned  with 
danger  to  life.  To  the  male,  the  giving  of  life 
is  a  laugh;  to  the  female,  blood,  anguish,  and 
sometimes  death.  Here  we  touch  one  of  the 
few  yet  important  differences  between  man 
and  woman  as  such. 

The  twenty  thousand  men  prematurely  slain 
on  a  field  of  battle,  mean,  to  the  women  of  their 
race,  twenty  thousand  human  creatures  to  be 
borne  within  them  for  months,  given  birth  to 
in  anguish,  fed  from  their  breasts  and  reared 
with  toil,  if  the  numbers  of  the  tribe  and  the 
strength  of  the  nation  are  to  be  maintained. 
In  nations  continually  at  war,  incessant  and 
unbroken  child-bearing  is  by  war  imposed  on 
all  women  if  the  state  is  to  survive ;  and  when- 
ever war  occurs,  if  numbers  are  to  be  main- 
tained, there  must  be  an  increased  child-bear- 
ing and  rearing.  This  throws  upon  woman  as 
woman  a  war  tax,  compared  with  which  all 
that  the  male  expends  in  military  preparations 
is  comparatively  light. 

The  relations  of  the  female  towards  the  pro- 
duction of  human  life  influence  undoubtedly 
even  her  relation  towards  animal  and  all  life. 
"It  is  a  fine  day,  let  us  go  out  and  kill  some- 
[181] 


thing!"  cries  the  typical  male  of  certain  races, 
instinctively;  "There  is  a  living  thing,  it  will 
die  if  it  is  not  cared  for,"  says  the  average 
woman,  almost  equally  instinctively.  It  is 
true  that  the  woman  will  sacrifice  as  merci- 
lessly, as  cruelly,  the  life  of  a  hated  rival  or  an 
enemy,  as  any  male;  but  she  always  knows 
what  she  is  doing ,  and  the  value  of  the  life  she 
takes!  There  is  no  light-hearted,  careless  en- 
joyment in  the  sacrifice  of  life  to  the  normal 
woman;  her  instinct,  instructed  by  experience, 
steps  in  to  prevent  it.  She  always  knows  what 
life  costs;  and  that  it  is  more  easy  to  destroy 
than  create  it. 

It  is  also  true,  that,  from  the  loftiest  stand- 
point, the  condemnation  of  war  which  has 
arisen  in  the  human  spirit,  is  in  no  sense  related 
to  any  particular  form  of  sex  function.  The 
man  and  the  woman  alike,  who  with  Isaiah  on 
the  hills  of  Palestine,  or  the  Indian  Buddha 
under  his  bo-tree,  have  seen  the  essential  unity 
of  all  sentient  life;  and  who  therefore  see  in 
war  but  a  symptom  of  that  crude  disco-ordina- 
tion of  life  on  earth,  not  yet  at  one  with  itself, 
which  affects  humanity  in  these  early  stages  of 
its  growth;  and  who  are  compelled  to  regard 
[18*] 


WOMAN    AND    WAR 

as  the  ultimate  goal  of  the  race,  though  yet 
perhaps  far  distant  across  the  ridges  of  in- 
numerable coming  ages,  that  harmony  between 
all  forms  of  conscious  life,  metaphorically  pre- 
figured by  the  ancient  Hebrew,  when  he  cried, 
"The  wolf  shall  dwell  with  the  lamb;  and  the 
leopard  shall  lie  down  with  the  kid;  and  the 
calf  and  the  young  lion  and  the  fatling  to- 
gether, and  a  little  child  shall  lead  them!" — 
to  the  individual,  whether  man  or  woman,  who 
has  reached  this  standpoint,  there  is  no  need 
for  enlightenment  from  the  instincts  of  tne 
child-bearers  of  society  as  such;  their  con- 
demnation of  war,  rising  not  so  much  from 
the  fact  that  it  is  a  wasteful  destruction  of 
human  flesh,  as  that  it  is  an  indication  of  the 
non-existence  of  that  co-ordination,  the  har- 
mony which  is  summed  up  in  the  cry,  "My  lit- 
tle children,  love  one  another." 

But  for  the  vast  bulk  of  humanity,  probably 
for  generations  to  come,  the  instinctive  antag- 
onism of  the  human  child-bearer  to  reckless 
destruction  of  that  which  she  has  at  so  much 
cost  produced  will  probably  be  necessary  to 
educate  the  race  to  any  clear  conception  of  the 
bestiality  and  insanity  of  war. 
[183] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

War  will  pass  when  intellectual  culture  and 
activity  have  made  possible  to  the  female  an 
equal  share  in  the  control  and  governance  of 
modern  national  life;  it  will  probably  not  pass 
away  much  sooner;  its  extinction  will  not  be 
delayed  much  longer. 

It  is  especially  in  the  domain  of  war  that  we, 
the  bearers  of  men's  bodies,  who  supply  its 
most  valuable  munition,  who,  not  amid  the 
clamor  and  ardor  of  battle,  but  singly,  and 
alone,  with  a  three-in-the-morning  courage, 
shed  our  blood  and  face  death  that  the  battle- 
field might  have  its  food,  a  food  more  precious 
to  us  than  our  heart's  blood ;  it  is  we  especially 
who,  in  the  domain  of  war,  have  our  word  to 
say,  a  word  no  man  can  say  for  us.  It  is  our 
intention  to  enter  into  the  domain  of  war  and 
to  labor  there  till  in  the  course  of  generations 
we  have  extinguished  it. 

If  to-day  we  claim  all  labor  for  our  province, 
yet  more  especially  do  we  claim  those  fields  in 
which  the  difference  in  the  reproductive  func- 
tion between  man  and  woman  may  place  male 
and  female  at  a  slightly  different  angle  with 
regard  to  certain  facts  of  human  life. 

[184] 


SEX  DIFFERENCES 


CHAPTER  V 

SEX   DIFFERENCES 

IF  we  examine  the  physical  phenomenon  of 
sex  as  it  manifests  itself  in  the  human  creature, 
we  find,  in  the  first  stages  of  the  individual's 
existence,  no  difference  discernible,  by  any 
means  we  have  at  present  at  our  command,  be- 
tween those  germs  which  are  ultimately  to  be- 
come male  or  female.  Later,  in  the  fetal  life, 
at  birth,  and  through  infancy,  though  the 
organs  of  sex  serve  to  distinguish  the  male 
from  the  female,  there  is  in  the  general  struc- 
ture and  working  of  the  organism  little  or 
nothing  to  divide  the  sexes. 

Even  when  puberty  is  reached,  with  its 
enormous  development  of  sexual  and  repro- 
ductive activity  modifying  those  parts  of  the 
organism  with  which  it  is  concerned,  and  pro- 
ducing certain  secondary  sexual  characteristics, 
there  yet  remains  a  major  extent  of  the  human 
body  and  of  physical  function  little,  or  not  at 
[187] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

all,  affected  by  sex  modification.  The  eye,  the 
ear,  the  sense  of  touch,  the  general  organs  of 
nutrition  and  respiration  and  volition  are  in 
the  main  identical,  and  often  differ  far  more 
in  persons  of  the  same  sex  than  in  those  of  op- 
posite sexes;  even  on  the  dissecting-table  the 
tissues  of  the  male  and  female  are  often 
wholly  indistinguishable. 

It  is  when  we  consider  the  reproductive 
organs  themselves  and  their  forms  of  activity, 
and  such  parts  of  the  organism  modified  di- 
rectly in  relation  to  them,  that  a  real  and  im- 
portant difference  is  found  to  exist,  radical 
though  absolutely  complemental.  It  is  exactly 
as  we  approach  the  reproductive  functions  that 
the  male  and  female  bodies  differ;  exactly  as 
we  recede  from  them  that  they  become  more 
and  more  similar,  and  even  absolutely  identical. 
Taking  the  eye,  perhaps  the  most  highly  de- 
veloped, complex  organ  in  the  body,  and,  if  an 
organ  may  be  allowed  the  term,  the  most  in- 
tellectual organ  of  sense,  we  find  it  remains 
the  same  in  male  and  female  in  structure,  in 
appearance,  and  in  function  throughout  life; 
while  the  breast,  closely  connected  with  repro- 
duction, though  absolutely  identical  in  both 
[188] 


SEX   DIFFERENCES 

forms  in  infancy,  assumes  a  widely  different 
organization  when  reproductive  activity  is 
actually  concerned. 

When  we  turn  to  the  psychic  phase  of- 
human  life,  an  exactly  analogous  phenomenon 
presents  itself.  The  intelligence,  emotions, 
and  desires  of  the  human  infant  at  birth  differ 
not  at  all  perceptibly,  as  its  sex  may  be  male 
or  female;  and  such  psychic  differences  as  ap- 
pear to  exist  in  later  childhood  are  undoubtedly 
very  largely  the  result  of  artificial  training, 
forcing  on  the  appearance  of  psychic  sexual 
divergencies  long  before  they  would  tend  spon- 
taneously to  appear;  as  where  sports  and  oc- 
cupations are  interdicted  to  young  children  on 
the  ground  of  their  supposed  sexual  unfitness ; 
as  when  an  infant  female  is  forcibly  prevented 
from  climbing  or  shouting,  and  the  infant  male 
from  amusing  himself  with  needle  and  thread 
or  dolls.  Even  in  the  fully  adult  human,  and 
in  spite  of  difference  of  training,  the  psychic 
activities  over  a  large  extent  of  life  appear  to 
be  absolutely  identical.  The  male  and  female 
brains  acquire  languages,  solve  mathematical 
problems,  and  master  scientific  detail  in  a  man- 
ner wholly  indistinguishable;  as  illustrated  by 
[189] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  fact  that  in  modern  universities  the  papers 
sent  in  by  male  and  female  candidates  are  as 
a  rule  identical  in  type. 

Placed  in  like  external  conditions,  their 
tastes  and  emotions,  over  a  vast  part  of  the 
surface  of  life,  are  identical;  and,  in  an  im- 
mense number  of  those  cases  where  psychic 
sex  differences  appear  to  exist,  subject  to 
rigid  analysis  they  are  found  to  be  artificial 
creations,  for,  when  other  races  or  classes  are 
studied,  they  are  found  non-existent  as  sexual 
characteristics.  The  female  is  supposed  by 
ignorant  persons  in  modern  European  societies 
to  have  an  inherent  love  for  bright  colors  and 
ornaments,  not  shared  by  the  male;  while  ex- 
perience of  other  societies  and  past  social  con- 
ditions proves  that  it  is  as  often  the  male  who 
has  been  even  more  desirous  of  attiring  himself 
in  bright  raiment  and  adorning  himself  with 
brilliant  jewels;  or  as  when,  among  certain 
tribes  of  savages,  the  use  of  tobacco  is  sup- 
posed to  be  a  peculiarly  female  prerogative, 
while,  in  some  modern  societies,  it  is  supposed 

to  have  some  relation  to  masculinity.1 

i 

i  The  savage  male  of  to-day  when  attired  in  his  paint,  feath- 
ers, cats'  tails,  and  necklaces  is  an  immeasurably  more  orna~ 

[190] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

But  there  remain  certain  psychic  differ- 
ences in  attitude,  on  the  part  of  male  and  fe- 
male as  such,  which  are  inherent  and  not 
artificial:  and,  in  the  psychic  human  world, 
it  is  exactly  as  we  approach  the  sphere  of 

merited  and  imposing  figure  than  his  female,  even  when  fully 
attired  for  a  dance  in  beads  and  bangles:  the  Oriental  male 
has  sometimes  scarcely  been  able  to  walk  under  the  weight 
of  his  ornaments;  and  the  males  of  Europe  a  couple  of  cen- 
turies ago,  with  their  powdered  wigs,  lace  ruffles  and  cuffs, 
paste  buckles,  feathered  cocked  hats,  and  patches  were  quite 
as  ridiculous  in  their  excess  of  adornment  as  the  comple- 
mentary females  of  their  own  day,  or  the  most  parasitic  females 
of  this. 

Both  in  the  class  and  the  individual,  whether  male  or  fe- 
male, an  intense  love  of  dress  and  meretricious  external  adorn- 
ment is  almost  invariably  the  concomitant  and  outcome  of 
parasitism.  Were  the  parasite  female  class  in  our  own  socie- 
ties to  pass  away,  French  fashions  with  their  easeless  and 
grotesque  variations  (shaped  not  for  use  or  beauty,  but  the 
attracting  of  attention)  would  die  out.  And  the  extent  to 
which  any  woman  to-day,  not  herself  belonging  to  the  parasite 
class  and  still  laboring,  attempts  to  follow  afar  off  the  fash- 
ions of  the  parasite,  may  be  taken  generally  as  an  almost  cer- 
tain indication  of  the  ease  with  which  she  would  accept 
parasitism  were  its  conditions  offered  her. 

The  tendency  of  the  cultured  and  intellectually  laboring 
woman  of  to-day  to  adopt  a  more  rational  type  of  attire,  less 
shaped  to  attract  attention  to  the  individual  than  to  confer  com- 
fort and  abstain  from  impeding  activity,  is  often  spoken  of  aa 
an  attempt  on  the  part  of  woman  slavishly  to  imitate  man. 
What  is  really  taking  place  is,  that  like  causes  are  producing 
like  effects  on  human  creatures  with  common  characteristics. 

[191] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

sexual  and  reproductive  activity,  with  those 
emotions  and  instincts  connected  with  sex  and 
the  reproduction  of  the  race,  that  a  difference 
does  appear. 

In  the  animal  world  all  forms  of  psychic 
variations  are  found  allying  themselves  now 
with  the  male  sex  form,  and  then  with  the 
female.  In  the  insect  and  fish  worlds,  where 
the  female  forms  are  generally  larger  and 
stronger  than  the  male,  the  female  is  gen- 
erally more  pugnacious  and  predatory  than 
the  male.  Among  birds-of-prey,  where  the 
female  form  is  larger  and  stronger  than  the 
male,  the  psychic  differences  seem  very  small. 
Among  eagles  and  other  allied  forms,  which 
are  strictly  monogamous,  the  affection  of  the 
female  for  the  male  is  so  great  that  she  is  said 
never  to  mate  again  if  the  male  dies,  and  both 
watch  over  and  care  for  the  young  with  ex- 
treme solicitude.  The  ostrich  male  form, 
though  perhaps  larger  than  the  female,  shares 
with  her  the  labor  of  hatching  the  eggs,  re- 
lieving the  hen  at  a  fixed  hour  daily:  and  his 
care  for  the  young  when  hatched  is  as  tender 
as  hers.  Among  song-birds,  in  which  the  male 
and  female  forms  are  so  alike  as  sometimes 
[192] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

to  be  indistinguishable,  and  which  are  also 
monogamous,  the  male  and  female  forms  not 
only  exhibit  the  same  passionate  affection  for 
each  other  (in  the  case  of  the  South  African 
cock-o-veet,  they  have  one  answering  love-song 
between  them ;  the  male  sounding  two  or  three 
notes  and  the  female  completing  it  with  two  or 
three  more),  but  they  build  the  nest  together 
and  rear  the  young  with  an  equal  care.  In 
the  case  of  the  little  kapok  bird  of  the  Cape, 
a  beautiful  white  fluffy  nest  is  made  by  both 
of  the  white  down  of  a  certain  plant,  and  im- 
mediately below  the  entrance  to  the  cavity 
in  which  the  little  female  sits  on  the  eggs  is  a 
small  shelf  or  basket,  in  which  the  tiny  male 
sits  to  watch  over  and  guard  them.  It  is 
among  certain  orders  of  birds  that  sex  mani- 
festations appear  to  assume  their  most  har- 
monious and  poetical  forms  on  earth.  Among 
gallinaceous  birds,  on  the  other  hand,  where 
the  cock  is  much  larger  and  more  pugnacious 
than  the  female,  and  which  are  polygamous, 
the  cock  does  not  court  the  female  by  song, 
but  seizes  her  by  force,  and  shows  little  or  no 
interest  in  his  offspring,  neither  sharing  in  the 
brooding  nor  feeding  of  the  young;  and  even 
[193] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

at  times  seizing  any  tempting  morsel  which 
the  young  or  the  hen  may  have  discovered. 

Among  mammals,  the  male  form  tends  to  be 
slightly  larger  than  the  female,  though  not  al- 
ways (the  female  whale,  for  instance,  being 
larger  than  the  male)  ;  the  male  also  tends  to  be 
more  pugnacious  and  less  careful  of  the  young; 
though  to  this  rule  also  there  are  exceptions. 
In  the  case  of  the  South  African  mierkat,  for 
instance,  the  female  is  generally  more  com- 
bative and  more  difficult  to  tame  than  the 
male;  and  it  is  the  males  who  from  the  mo- 
ment of  birth  watch  over  the  young  with  the 
most  passionate  and  tender  solicitude,  keeping 
them  warm  under  their  persons,  carrying  them 
to  places  of  safety  in  their  mouths,  and  feed- 
ing them  till  full  grown;  and  this  they  do  not 
only  to  their  own  young,  but  to  any  young 
who  may  be  brought  in  contact  with  them. 
We  have  known  a  male  mierkat  so  assiduous 
in  feeding  young  that  were  quite  unrelated  to 
himself,  taking  to  them  every  morsel  of  food 
given  him,  that  we  have  been  compelled  to 
shut  him  up  in  a  room  alone  when  feeding 
him,  to  prevent  his  starving  himself  to  death: 
the  male  mierkat  thus  exhibiting  exactly  those 
[194] 


SEX   DIFFERENCES 

psychic  qualities  which  are  generally  regarded 
as  peculiarly  feminine;  the  females,  on  the 
other  hand,  being  far  more  pugnacious  to- 
wards each  other  than  are  the  males. 

Among  mammals  generally,  except  the  tend- 
ency to  greater  pugnacity  shown  by  the  male 
towards  other  males,  and  the  greater  solicitude 
for  the  young  shown  generally  by  the  female 
form,  but  not  always,  the  psychic  differences 
between  the  two  sex  forms  are  not  great.  Be- 
tween the  male  and  female  pointer  as  puppies, 
there  is  as  little  difference  in  mental  activity 
as  in  physical;  and  even  when  adult,  on  the 
hunting-ground,  that  great  non-sexual  field 
in  which  their  highest  mental  and  physical 
activities  are  displayed,  there  is  little  or  noth- 
ing which  distinguishes  materially  between  the 
male  and  female;  in  method,  manner,  and 
quickness  they  are  alike;  in  devotion  to  man, 
they  are  psychically  identical.1  It  is  at  the 
moment  when  the  reproductive  element  comes 
fully  into  play  that  similarity  and  identity 
cease.  In  the  intensity  of  initial  sex  instinct 

i  It  is  often  said  the  female  dog  is  more  intelligent  than  the 
male;  but  I  am  almost  inclined  to  doubt  this,  after  long  and 
close  study  of  both  forms. 

[195] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

they  are  alike;  the  female  will  leap  from  win- 
dows, climb  walls,  and  almost  endanger  her  life 
to  reach  the  male  who  waits  for  her,  as  readily 
as  he  will  to  gain  her.  It  is  when  the  bitch 
lies  with  her  six  young  drawing  life  from  her 
breast,  and  gazing  with  wistful  and  anguished 
solicitude  at  every  hand  stretched  out  to  touch 
them,  a  world  of  emotion  concentrated  on  the 
sightless  creatures,  and  a  whole  body  of  new 
mental  aptitudes  brought  into  play  in  caring 
for  them,  it  is  then  that  between  her  and  the 
male  who  begot  them,  but  cares  nothing  for 
them,  there  does  rise  a  psychic  difference  that 
is  real  and  wide.  Alike  in  the  sports  of  pup- 
pydom  and  the  non-sexual  activities  of  adult 
age;  alike  in  the  possession  of  the  initial  in- 
stinct which  draws  the  sex  to  the  sex,  the  mo- 
ment active  sexual  reproduction  is  concerned, 
there  is  opened  to  the  female  a  world  of  sen- 
sations and  experiences,  from  which  her  male 
companion  is  forever  excluded. 

So  also  is  our  human  world:  alike  in  the 
sports,  and  joys,  and  sorrows  of  infancy;  alike 
in  the  non-sexual  labors  of  life;  alike  even  in 
the  possession  of  that  initial  instinct  which 
draws  sex  to  sex,  and  which,  differing  slightly 
[196] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

in  its  forms  of  manifestation,  is  of  equal  in- 
tensity in  both;  the  moment  actual  reproduc- 
tion begins  to  take  place,  the  man  and  the 
woman  enter  spheres  of  sensation,  perception, 
emotion,  desire,  and  knowledge  which  are  not, 
and  cannot  be,  absolutely  identical.  Between 
the  man  who,  in  an  instant  of  light-hearted 
enjoyment,  begets  the  infant  (who  may  even 
beget  it  in  a  state  of  half -drunken  unconscious- 
ness, and  may  easily  know  nothing  of  its  ex- 
istence for  months  or  years  after  it  is  born, 
or  even  never  at  all ;  and  who  under  no  circum- 
stances can  have  any  direct  sensational  knowl- 
edge of  its  relation  to  himself)  and  the  woman 
who  bears  it  continuously  for  months  within 
her  body,  and  who  gives  birth  to  it  in  pain, 
and  who,  if  it  is  to  live,  is  compelled,  or  was 
in  primitive  times,  to  nourish  it  for  months 
from  the  blood  of  her  own  being — between 
these,  there  exists  of  necessity,  towards  a  lim- 
ited but  all-important  body  of  human  interests 
and  phenomena,  a  distinct  psychic  attitude. 
At  this  one  point,  the  two  great  halves  of  hu- 
manity stand  confronting  certain  great  ele- 
ments in  human  existence,  from  angles  that  are 
not  identical.  From  the  moment  the  universal 
[197] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

initial  attraction  of  sex  to  sex  becomes  incar- 
nate in  the  first  concrete  sexual  act  till  the 
developed  offspring  attains  maturity,  no  step 
in  the  reproductive  journey,  or  in  their  rela- 
tion to  their  offspring,  has  been  quite  iden- 
tical for  the  man  and  the  woman.  And  this 
divergence  of  experiences  in  human  relations 
must  react  on  their  attitude  towards  that  par- 
ticular body  of  human  concerns  which  directly 
is  connected  with  the  sexual  reproduction  of 
the  race,  and  it  is  exactly  in  these  fields  of 
human  activity,  where  sex  as  sex  is  concerned, 
that  woman  as  woman  has  a  part  to  play  which 
she  cannot  resign  into  the  hands  of  others. 

It  may  be  truly  said  that  in  the  laboratory, 
the  designing-room,  the  factory,  the  mart,  the 
mathematician's  study,  and  in  all  fields  of 
purely  abstract  and  impersonal  labor,  while 
the  entrance  of  woman  would  add  to  the  net 
result  of  human  labor  in  those  fields,  and 
though  a  grave  injustice  is  done  to  the  indi- 
vidual woman  excluded  from  perhaps  the  only 
field  she  is  fitted  to  excel  in,  yet  woman  as 
woman  has  probably  little  or  nothing  to  con- 
tribute in  those  fields  that  is  radically  distinct 
from  that  which  man  might  supply;  there 
[198] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

would  be  a  difference  in  quality  but  probably 
none  in  kind,  in  the  work  done  for  the  race. 

But  in  those  spheres  of  social  activity  deal- 
ing especially  with  certain  relations  between 
human  creatures  because  of  their  diverse  if 
complementary  relation  to  the  production  of 
human  life,  the  sexes  as  sexes  have  often  each 
a  part  to  play  which  the  other  cannot  play 
for  them,  have  each  a  knowledge  gained  from 
phases  of  human  experience,  which  the  other 
cannot  supply;  here  woman  as  woman  has 
something  radically  distinct  to  contribute  to 
the  sum-total  of  human  knowledge,  and  her 
activity  is  of  importance,  not  merely  indi- 
vidually, but  collectively,  and  as  a  class. 

That  demand,  which  to-day  in  all  demo- 
cratic self-governing  countries  is  being  made 
by  women,  to  be  accorded  their  share  in  the 
electoral  and  ultimately  in  the  legislative  and 
executive  duties  of  government,  is  based  on 
two  grounds :  the  wider,  that  they  find  nothing 
in  the  nature  of  their  sex-function  which  ex- 
onerates them,  as  human  beings,  from  their 
obligation  to  take  part  in  the  labors  of  guid- 
ance and  government  in  their  state;  the  nar- 
rower, but  yet  important  ground,  that,  in  as 
[199] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

far  as  in  one  direction,  i.  e.,  in  the  special  form 
of  their  sex  function,  they  do  differ  from  the 
male,  they,  in  so  far,  form  a  class  and  are 
bound  to  represent  the  interests  of,  and  to  give 
the  state  the  benefit  of,  the  insight  of  their 
class,  in  certain  directions.  Those  persons 
who  imagine  that  the  balance  of  great  political 
parties  in  almost  any  society  would  be  seri- 
ously changed  by  the  admission  of  its  women 
in  public  functions  are  undoubtedly  wholly 
wrong. 

The  fundamental  division  of  humans  into 
those  inclined  to  hold  by  the  past  and  defend 
whatever  is,  and  those  hopeful  of  the  future 
and  inclined  to  introduce  change,  would  prob- 
ably be  found  to  exist  in  much  the  same  pro- 
portion were  the  males  or  the  females  of  any 
given  society  compared:  and  females  of  each 
class  will  in  the  main  share  the  faults,  the  vir- 
tues, and  the  prejudices  of  their  class.  The 
individual  may  lose  by  being  excluded  on  the 
ground  of  sex  from  a  share  of  public  labor, 
and  by  being  robbed  of  a  portion  of  their 
lawful  individual  weight  in  their  own  society; 
and  the  society  as  a  whole  may  lose  by  having 
a  smaller  number  to  select  her  chosen  laborers 
[200] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

from;  yet,  undoubtedly,  on  the  mass  of  social, 
political,  and  international  questions,  the  con- 
clusions arrived  at  by  one  sex  would  be  ex- 
actly those  arrived  at  by  the  other. 

Were  a  body  elected  to  adjudicate  upon 
Greek  accents,  or  to  pass  a  decision  on  the 
relative  fineness  of  woolens  and  linens,  the 
form  of  sex  of  the  persons  composing  it  would 
probably  have  no  bearing  on  the  result;  there 
is  no  rational  ground  for  supposing  that,  on 
a  question  of  Greek  accents  or  the  thickness 
of  cloths,  equally  instructed  males  and  females 
would  differ.  Here  sex  plays  no  part.  The 
experience  and  instructedness  of  the  individ- 
uals would  tell:  their  sexual  attributes  would 
be  indifferent. 

But  there  are  points,  comparatively  small, 
even  very  small,  in  number,  yet  of  vital  im- 
portance to  human  life,  in  which  sex  does  play 
a  part. 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  the 
body  called  to  adjudicate  upon  the  question:— 
whether  the  temporary  sale  of  the  female  body 
for  sexual  purposes  shall  or  shall  not  be  a  form 
of  traffic  encouraged  and  recognized  by  the 
state;  or  whether  one  law  shall  exist  for  the 
[201] 


WOMAN    AND   LABOR 

licentious  human  female  and  another  for  the 
licentious  human  male;  whether  the  claim  of 
the  female  to  the  offspring  she  bears  shall  or 
shall  not  equal  that  of  the  male  who  begets 
it;  whether  an  act  of  infidelity  on  the  part  of 
the  male  shall  or  shall  not  terminate  the  con- 
tract which  binds  his  female  companion  to  him 
as  completely  as  an  act  of  infidelity  on  her  part 
would  terminate  her  claim  on  him;  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  indifference  whether  a  body  elected 
to  adjudicate  on  such  points  as  these  consists  of 
males  solely,  or  females  solely,  or  of  both  com- 
bined. As  it  consists  of  one,  or  the  other,  or 
of  both,  so  not  only  will  the  answers  vary,  but, 
in  some  cases,  will  they  be  completely  diverse. 
Here  we  come  into  the  narrow,  but  important, 
region  where  sex  as  sex  manifestly  plays  its 
part;  where  the  male  as  male  and  the  female 
as  female  have  each  their  body  of  perceptions 
and  experiences,  which  they  do  not  hold  in 
common;  here  one  sex  cannot  adequately  rep- 
resent the  other.  It  is  here  that  each  sexual 
part  of  the  race  has  something  radically  dis- 
tinct to  contribute  to  the  wisdom  of  the  race. 
We,  to-day,  take  all  labor  for  our  province  1 
We  seek  to  enter  the  non-sexual  fields  of  in- 
[202] 


SEX    DIFFERENCES 

tellectual  or  physical  toil,  because  we  are  un- 
able to  see  to-day,  with  regard  to  them,  any 
dividing  wall  raised  by  sex  which  excludes  us 
from  them.  We  are  yet  equally  determined 
to  enter  those  in  which  sex  does  play  its  part, 
because  it  is  here  that  woman,  the  bearer  of 
the  race,  must  stand  side  by  side  with  man, 
the  begetter;  if  a  completed  human  wisdom, 
an  insight  that  misses  no  aspect  of  human  life, 
and  an  activity  that  is  in  harmony  with  the  en- 
tire knowledge  and  the  entire  instinct  of  the 
human  race,  is  to  exist.  It  is  here  that  the 
man  cannot  act  for  the  woman  nor  the  woman 
for  the  man;  but  both  must  interact.  It  is 
here  that  each  sexual  half  of  the  race,  so  closely 
and  indistinguishably  blended  elsewhere,  has 
its  own  distinct  contribution  to  make  to  the 
sum  total  of  human  knowledge  and  human 
wisdom.  Neither  is  the  woman  without  the 
man,  nor  the  man  without  the  woman,  the 
completed  human  intelligence. 

We  claim,  to-day,  all  labor  for  our  province! 
Those  large  fields  in  which  it  would  appear 
sex  plays  no  part,  and  equally  those  in  which 
it  plays  a  part. 

[203] 


CERTAIN  OBJECTIONS 


CHAPTER  VI 

CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

IT  has  been  stated  sometimes,  though  more 
often  implicitly  than  in  any  direct  or  logical 
form,  (this  statement  being' one  it  is  not  easy  to 
make  definitely  without  its  reducing  itself 
to  nullity!)  that  woman  should  seek  no  fields 
of  labor  in  the  new  world  of  social  conditions 
that  is  arising  about  us,  as  she  has  her  function 
as  child-bearer:  a  labor  which,  by  her  own 
showing,  is  arduous  and  dangerous,  though  she 
may  love  it  as  a  soldier  loves  his  battle  field; 
that  woman  should  perform  her  sex  functions 
only,  allowing  man  or  the  state  to  support  her, 
even  when  she  is  only  potentially  a  child-bearer 
and  bears  no  children.1 

*  Such  a  scheme,  as  has  before  been  stated,  was  actually  put 
forward  by  a  literary  man  in  England  some  years  ago:  but  he 
had  the  sense  to  state  that  it  should  apply  only  to  women  of  the 
upper  classes;  the  mass  of  laboring  women,  who  form  the  vast 
bulk  of  the  English  women  of  the  present  day,  being  left  to 
their  ill-paid  drudgery  and  their  child-bearing  as  well ! 

[207] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

There  is  some  difficulty  in  replying  to  a 
theorist  so  wholly  delusive.  Not  only  is  he  to 
be  met  by  all  the  arguments  against  parasitism 
of  class  or  race;  but,  at  the  present  day,  when 
probably  much  more  than  half  the  world's  most 
laborious  and  ill-paid  labor  is  still  performed 
by  women,  from  tea  pickers  and  cocoa  tenders 
in  India  and  the  islands,  to  the  washerwomen, 
cooks,  and  drudging  laboring  men's  wives, 
who,  in  addition  to  the  sternest  and  most  un- 
ending toil,  throw  in  their  child-bearing  as  a  lit- 
tle addition:  and  when  in  some  civilized  coun- 
tries women  exceed  the  males  in  numbers  by 
one  million,  so  that  there  would  still  be  one  mil- 
lion females  for  whom  there  was  no  legitimate 
sexual  outlet,  though  each  male  in  the  nation 
supported  a  female,  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to 
reply  with  gravity  to  the  assertion,  "Let 
Woman  be  content  to  be  the  'Divine  Child- 
bearer/  and  ask  no  more." 

Were  it  worth  replying  gravely  to  so  idle  a 
theorist,  we  might  answer: — Through  all  the 
ages  of  the  past,  when,  with  heavy  womb  and 
hard  labor-worn  hands,  we  physically  toiled 
beside  man,  bearing  up  by  the  labor  of  our 
bodies  the  world  about  us,  it  was  never  sug- 
[208] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

gested  to  us,  "You,  the  child-bearers  of  the 
race,  have  in  that  one  function  a  labor  that 
equals  all  others  combined;  therefore,  toil  no 
more  in  other  directions,  we  pray  of  you. 
Neither  plant,  nor  build,  nor  bend  over  the 
grindstone,  nor  far  into  the  night,  while  we 
sleep,  sit  weaving  the  clothing  we  and  our 
children  are  to  wear !  Leave  it  to  us,  to  plant, 
to  reap,  to  weave,  to  work,  to  toil  for  you,  O 
sacred  child-bearer!  Work  no  more;  every 
man  of  the  race  will  work  for  you!"  This  cry 
iii  all  the  grim  ages  of  our  past  toil  we  never 
heard. 

And  to-day  the  lofty  theorist,  who  to-night 
stands  before  the  drawing-room  fire  in  spot- 
less shirt-front  and  perfectly  fitting  clothes, 
and  declaims  upon  the  amplitude  of  woman's 
work  in  life  as  child-bearer,  and  the  mighty 
value  of  that  labor  which  exceeds  all  other, 
making  it  unnecessary  for  her  to  share  man's 
grosser  and  lower  toils :  does  he  always  remem- 
ber his  theory?  When  waking  to-morrow 
morning,  he  finds  that  the  elderly  house 
drudge,  who  rises  at  dawn  while  he  yet  sleeps, 
to  make  his  tea  and  clean  his  boots,  has  brought 
his  tea  late,  and  polished  his  boots  ill ;  may  he 
[209] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

not  even  sharply  condemn  her,  and  assure  her 
she  will  have  to  leave  unless  she  works  harder 
and  rises  earlier?  He  does  not  exclaim  to  her, 
"Divine  child-bearer!  Potential  mother  of  the 
race!  Why  should  you  clean  my  boots  or 
bring  up  my  tea,  while  I  lie  warm  in  bed?  Is 
it  not  enough  you  should  have  the  holy  and 
mysterious  power  of  bringing  the  race  to  life? 
Let  that  content  you.  Henceforth  I  shall  get 
up  at  dawn  and  make  my  own  tea  and  clean 
my  own  boots,  and  pay  you  just  the  same!" 
Nor,  should  his  landlady,  now  about  to  give 
birth  to  her  ninth  child,  send  him  up  a  poorly- 
cooked  dinner  or  forget  to  bring  up  his  scut- 
tle of  coal,  does  he  send  for  her  and  thus 
apostrophize  the  astonished  matron:  "Child- 
bearer  of  the  race!  Producer  of  men!  Can- 
not you  be  contented  with  so  noble  and  lofty 
a  function  in  life  without  toiling  and  moiling? 
Why  carry  up  heavy  coal-scuttles  from  the 
cellar  and  bend  over  hot  fires,  wearing  out 
nerve  and  muscle  that  should  be  reserved  for 
higher  duties?  We,  we  men  of  the  race,  will 
perform  its  mean,  its  sordid,  its  grinding  toil! 
For  woman  is  beauty,  peace,  repose!  Your 
function  is  to  give  life,  not  to  support  it  by 
[210] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

labor.  The  Mother,  the  Mother !  How  won- 
derful it  sounds!  Toil  no  more!  Rest  is  for 
you;  labor  and  drudgery  for  us!"  Would  he 
not  rather  assure  her  that,  unless  she  labored 
more  assiduously  and  sternly,  she  would  lose 
his  custom  and  so  be  unable  to  pay  her  month's 
rent,  and  perhaps  so,  with  children  and  an  in- 
valid or  drunken  husband  whom  she  supports, 
be  turned  out  into  the  streets?  For  it  is  re- 
markable, that,  with  theorists  of  this  class,  it 
is  not  toil,  or  the  amount  of  toil,  crushing  alike 
to  brain  and  body,  which  the  female  under- 
takes that  he  objects  to;  it  is  the  form  and  the 
amount  of  the  reward.  It  is  not  the  hand- 
laboring  woman,  even  in  his  own  society,  worn 
out  and  prematurely  aged  at  forty  with  grind- 
ing domestic  toil  that  has  no  beginning  and 
knows  no  end — 

"Man's  work  is  from  sun  to  sun, 
But  woman's  work  is  never  done" — 

it  is  not  the  haggard,  work-worn  woman  and 
mother  who  irons  his  shirts,  or  the  potential 
mother  who  destroys  health  and  youth  in  the 
sweater's  den  where  she  sews  the  garments  in 
[211] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

which  he  appears  so  radiantly  in  the  drawing- 
room  who  disturbs  him. 

It  is  the  thought  of  the  woman-doctor  with 
an  income  of  some  hundreds  a  year,  who 
drives  round  in  her  carriage  to  see  her  patients, 
or  receives  them  in  her  consulting-rooms,  and 
who  spends  the  evening  smoking  and  reading 
before  her  study  fire  or  receiving  her  guests; 
it  is  the  thought  of  the  woman  who,  as  legis- 
lator, may  loll  for  perhaps  six  hours  on  the 
padded  seat  of  legislative  bench,  relieving  the 
tedium  now  and  then  by  a  turn  in  the  billiard- 
or  refreshment-room,  when  she  is  not  needed 
to  vote  or  speak;  it  is  the  woman  as  Greek 
professor,  with  three  or  four  hundred  a  year, 
who  gives  half  a  dozen  lectures  a  week,  and 
has  leisure  to  enjoy  the  society  of  her  hus- 
band and  children,  and  to  devote  to  her  own 
study  and  life  of  thought ;  it  is  she  who  wrings 
his  heart.  It  is  not  the  woman,  who,  on  hands 
and  knees,  at  tenpence  a  day,  scrubs  the  floors 
of  the  public  buildings,  or  private  dwellings, 
that  fills  him  with  anguish  for  womanhood: 
that  somewhat  quadrupedal  posture  is  for  him 
truly  feminine,  and  does  not  interfere  with  the 
ideal  of  the  mother  and  child-bearer.  That, 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

in  some  other  man's  house,  or  perhaps  his  own, 
while  he  and  the  wife  he  keeps  for  his  pleas- 
ure are  visiting  concert  or  entertainment,  some 
weary  woman  paces  till  far  into  the  night 
bearing  with  aching  back  and  tired  head  the 
fretful  teething  child  he  brought  into  the 
world,  for  a  pittance  of  twenty  or  thirty 
pounds  a  year,  does  not  distress  him.  But 
that  the  same  woman  by  work  in  an  office 
should  earn  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds, 
be  able  to  have  a  comfortable  home  of  her  own 
and  her  evening  free  for  study  or  pleasure, 
distresses  him  deeply.  [It  is  not  the  labor,  or 
the  amount  of  labor,  so  much  as  the  amount  of 
reward  that  interferes  with  his  ideal  of  the 
eternal  womanly ;  he  is  as  a  rule  contented  that 
the  women  of  the  race  should  labor  for  him, 
whether  as  tea-pickers  or  washerwoman,  or 
toilers  for  the  children  he  brings  into  the  world, 
provided  the  reward  they  receive  is  not  large, 
nor  in  such  fields  as  he  might  himself  desire  to 
enter. 

When  master  and  ass,   drawing  a  heavy 

burden  between  them,  should  have  climbed  a 

steep  mountain   range   together;   clambering 

over  sharp  rocks  and  across  sliding  gravel 

[213] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

where  no  water  is,  and  herbage  is  scant;  if, 
when  they  were  come  out  on  the  top  of  the 
mountain  and  before  them  stretch  broad,  green 
lands,  and  through  wide  half -open  gates  they 
caught  the  glimpse  of  trees  waving,  and  there 
came  the  sound  of  running  waters,  if  then  the 
master  should  say  to  his  ass,  "Good  beast  of 
mine,  lie  down!  I  can  push  the  whole  bur- 
den myself  now:  lie  down  here;  lie  down  my 
creature;  you  have  toiled  enough;  I  will  go 
on  alone!"  then  it  might  be  even  the  beast 
would  whisper  (with  that  glimpse  through  the 
swinging  gates  of  the  green  fields  beyond) — 
"Good  master,  we  two  have  climbed  this 
mighty  mountain  together,  and  the  stones  have 
cut  my  hoofs  as  they  cut  your  feet.  Perhaps, 
if  when  we  were  at  the  foot  you  had  found  out 
that  the  burden  was  too  heavy  for  me,  and  had 
then  said  to  me,  'Lie  down,  my  beastie;  I  will 
carry  on  the  burden  alone ;  lie  down  and  rest !' 
I  might  then  have  listened.  But  now,  just 
here,  where  I  see  the  gates  swinging  open,  a 
smooth  road,  and  green  fields  before  us,  I 
think  I  shall  go  on  a  little  farther.  We  two 
have  climbed  together;  maybe  we  shall  go  on 
yet,  side  by  side." 

[«!*] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

For  the  heart  of  laboring  womanhood  cries 
out  to-day  to  the  man  who  would  suggest  she 
need  not  seek  new  fields  of  labor,  that  child- 
bearing  is  enough  for  her  share  in  life's  labor, 
"Do  you  dare  say  to  us  now,  that  we  are  fit 
to  do  nothing  but  child-bear,  that  when  that 
is  performed  our  powers  are  exhausted?  To 
us,  who  yet  through  all  the  ages  of  the  past, 
when  child-bearing  was  persistent  and  inces- 
sant, regarded  it  hardly  as  a  toil,  but  rather  as 
the  reward  of  labor;  has  our  right  hand  lost 
its  cunning  and  our  heart  its  strength,  that 
to-day,  when  human  labor  is  easier  and  hu- 
manity's work  grows  fairer,  you  say  to  us, 
'You  can  do  nothing  now  but  child-bear.'  Do 
you  dare  to  say  this,  to  us,  when  the  upward 
path  of  the  race  has  been  watered  by  the  sweat 
of  our  brow,  and  the  sides  of  the  road  by  which 
humanity  has  climbed  are  whitened  on  either 
hand  by  the  bones  of  the  womanhood  that  has 
fallen  there,  toiling  beside  man  ?  Do  you  dare 
say  this,  to  us,  when  even  to-day  the  food  you 
eat,  the  clothes  you  wear,  the  comfort  you  en- 
joy, is  largely  given  you  by  the  unending 
muscular  toil  of  woman?" 

As  the  women  of  old  planted  and  reaped 
[215] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

and  ground  the  grain  that  the  children  they 
bore  might  eat,  as  the  maidens  of  old  spun 
that  they  might  make  linen  for  their  house- 
holds and  obtain  the  right  to  bear  men;  so, 
though  we  bend  no  more  over  grindstones,  or 
labor  in  the  fields,  or  weave  by  hand,  it  is  our 
intention  to  enter  all  the  new  fields  of  labor, 
that  we  also  may  have  the  power  and  right 
to  bring  men  into  the  world.  It  is  our  faith 
that  the  day  comes  in  which  not  only  shall 
no  man  dare  to  say,  "It  is  enough  portion 
for  a  woman  in  life  that  she  bear  a  child," 
but  when  it  will  rather  be  said,  "What  noble 
labor  has  that  woman  performed,  that  she 
should  have  the  privilege  of  bringing  a  man 
or  woman  child  into  the  world?" 

But,  it  may  be  objected,  "What  if  the  fe- 
male half  of  humanity,  though  able,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  exercise  of  its  reproductive  func- 
tions, to  bear  its  share  in  the  new  fields  of  social 
labor  as  it  did  in  the  old,  be  yet  in  certain 
directions  a  less  productive  laborer  than  the 
male?  What  if,  in  the  main,  the  result  of  the 
labor  of  the  two  halves  should  not  be  found 
to  be  exactly  equal?" 

To  this  it  may  be  answered  that  it  is  within 
[216] 


the  range  of  possibility  that,  mysteriously  co- 
ordinated with  the  male  reproductive  function 
in  the  human,  there  may  also  be  in  many  di- 
rections a  tendency  to  possess  gifts  useful 
and  beneficial  to  the  race,  in  the  stage  of 
growth  it  has  now  reached,  in  excess  of  those 
possessed  by  the  female.  We  see  no  reason 
why  this  should  be  so,  and,  in  the  present 
state  of  our  knowledge,  this  is  a  point  on 
which  no  sane  person  would  dogmatize;  but 
it  is  possible!  It  may,  on  the  other  hand,  be 
that,  taken  in  the  bulk,  when  all  the  branches 
of  productive  labor  be  considered,  the  value  of 
the  labor  of  the  two  halves  of  humanity  will 
be  found  so  identical  and  so  closely  to  balance 
that  no  superiority  can  possibly  be  asserted  of 
either,  as  the  result  of  the  closest  analysis. 
This  also  is  possible. 

But,  it  may  also  be  that,  when  the  bulk  and 
sum-total  of  human  activities  is  surveyed  in 
future  ages,  it  will  be  found  that  the  value  of 
the  labor  of  the  female  in  the  world  that  is 
rising  about  us  has  exceeded  in  quality  or  in 
quantity  that  of  the  male.  We  see  no  reason 
either  why  this  should  be;  there  is  nothing  in 
the  nature  of  the  reproductive  function  in  the 
[217] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

female  human  which  of  necessity  implies  such 
superiority. 

Yet  it  may  be  that,  with  the  smaller  general 
bulk  and  the  muscular  fineness  and  the  prepon- 
derance of  brain  and  nervous  system  in  net 
bulk  over  the  fleshy  and  osseous  parts  of  the 
organism,  which  generally,  though  by  no 
means  always,  characterizes  the  female  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  male  of  the  human  species, 
go  mental  qualities  which  will  peculiarly  fit 
her  for  the  labor  of  the  future.  It  may  be 
that  her  lesser  possession  of  the  muscular  and 
osseous  strength,  which  were  the  elements  of 
primary  importance  to  humanity  and  which 
gave  dominance  in  one  stage  of  human  growth, 
and  which  placed  woman  at  a  social  disad- 
vantage as  compared  with  her  companion, 
will,  under  new  conditions  of  life,  in  which  the 
value  of  crude  mechanical  strength  as  distin- 
guished from  high  vitality  and  strong  nervous 
activity  is  passing  away,  prove  as  largely  to 
her  advantage,  as  his  muscular  bulk  and 
strength  in  the  past  proved  to  the  male.  It  is 
quite  possible,  in  the  new  world  which  is  aris- 
ing about  us,  that  the  type  of  human  most 
useful  to  society  and  best  fitted  for  its  future 
[218] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

conditions,  and  who  will  excel  in  the  most 
numerous  forms  of  activity,  will  be,  not  the 
muscularly  powerful  and  bulky,  but  the  highly 
versatile,  active,  vital,  adaptive,  sensitive, 
physically  fine-drawn  type:  and,  as  that  type, 
though,  like  the  muscularly  heavy  and  power- 
ful, by  no  means  peculiar  to  and  confined  to 
one  sex,  is  yet  rather  more  commonly  found 
in  conjunction  with  a  female  organism,  it  is 
quite  possible  that,  taken  in  the  bulk  and  on 
the  whole,  the  female  half  of  humanity  may, 
by  virtue  of  its  structural  adaptions,  be  found 
most  fitted  for  the  bulk  of  human  labors  in 
the  future! 

As  with  individuals  and  races,  so  also  with 
sexes,  changed  social  conditions  may  render 
exactly  those  subtle  qualities,  which  in  one 
social  state  were  a  disadvantage,  of  the  high- 
est social  advantage  in  another. 

The  skilled  diplomatist  or  politician,  so 
powerful  in  his  own  element,  on  board  ship 
during  a  storm  becomes  at  once  of  less  social 
value  or  consideration  than  the  meanest  sailor 
who  can  reef  a  sail  or  guide  a  wheel;  and,  if 
we  were  to  be  reduced  again  suddenly  to  a 
state  of  nature,  a  company  of  highly  civilized 
[219] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

men  and  women  would  at  once,  as  we  have 
before  remarked,  find  their  social  value  com- 
pletely inverted.  Landed  on  a  desert  shore, 
unarmed  and  naked,  to  encounter  wild  beasts 
and  savages,  and  to  combat  nature  for  food, 
the  primitive  scale  of  human  values  would  at 
once  reassert  itself.  It  would  not  then  be  the 
mighty  financier,  the  learned  judge,  or  great 
poet  and  scholar  who  would  be  sought  after, 
but  the  thickest-headed  navvy  who  could  throw 
a  stone  so  exactly  that  he  brought  down  a  bird, 
and  who  could  in  a  day  raise  a  wall  which 
would  shelter  the  group,  and  the  man  so 
powerful  that  he  could  surely  strike  an  enemy 
or  wild  beast  dead  with  his  club,  would  at  once 
be  objects  of  social  regard  and  attain  in- 
dividual eminence,  and  perhaps  dominance. 
It  would  not  be  the  skilled  dancer,  who  in  one 
night  in  a  civilized  state  earns  her  hundreds, 
nor  the  fragile,  clinging  beauty,  but  the  girl  of 
the  broad  back  and  the  strong  limb,  who  could 
collect  wood  and  carry  water,  who  would  be 
the  much  considered  and  much  sought  after 
female  in  such  a  community. 

Even  in  the  animal  world,  there  is  the  same 
inversion  in  values,  according  as  the  external 
[220] 


CERTAIN   OBJECTIONS 

conditions  vary.  The  lion,  while  ruling  over 
every  other  creature  in  his  primitive  wilds,  by 
right  of  his  untamable  ferocity,  size,  and  ra- 
pacity, is  yet  bound  to  become  a  prey  to  de- 
struction and  extermination  when  he  comes 
into  contact  with  the  new  condition  brought 
by  man;  while  the  wild  dog,  so  immeasurably 
his  inferior  in  size, "  and  ferocity,  is  tamed, 
survives  and  multiplies,  exactly  because  he 
has  been  driven  by  his  smaller  structure  and 
lesser  physical  force  to  develop  those  social  in- 
stincts and  those  forms  of  intelligence  which 
make  him  amenable  to  the  new  condition  of 
life  and  valuable  in  them. 

The  same  inversion  in  the  value  of  quali- 
ties may  be  traced  in  the  history  of  human 
species.  The  Jews,  whose  history  has  been 
one  long  story  of  oppression  at  the  hands  of 
more  muscular,  physically  powerful,  and  pu- 
gilistic peoples;  whom  we  find  first  making 
bricks  under  the  lash  of  the  Egyptian,  and 
later  hanging  his  harp  as  an  exile  among  the 
willow-trees  of  Babylon;  who,  for  eighteen 
hundred  years,  has  been  trampled,  tortured, 
and  despised  beneath  the  feet  of  the  more 
physically  powerful  and  pugilistic,  but  not 
[221] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

more  vital,  keen,  intelligent,  or  persistent 
races  of  Europe ;  has,  to-day,  by  the  slow  turn- 
ing of  the  wheel  of  life,  come  uppermost. 
The  Egyptian  taskmaster  and  warrior  have 
passed;  what  the  Babylonian  was  we  know  no 
more,  save  for  a  few  mud  tablets  and  rock 
inscriptions  recording  the  martial  victories; 
but  the  once  captive  Jew  we  see  to-day  in 
every  city  and  every  street;  until,  at  last,  the 
descendants  of  those  men  who  spat  when  they 
spoke  his  name,  and  forcibly  drew  his  teeth 
to  extract  his  money  from  him,  wait  patiently 
behind  each  other  for  admission  to  his  offices 
and  palaces;  while  nobles  solicit  his  daughters 
in  marriage  and  kings  are  proud  to  be  sum- 
moned to  his  table  in  hope  of  golden  crumbs, 
and  great  questions  of  peace  and  war  are 
often  held  balanced  in  the  hand  of  one  little 
asthmatic  Jew.  After  long  ages  of  disgrace 
and  pariahism,  the  time  has  come,  whether  for 
good  or  for  evil,  when  just  those  qualities 
which  the  Jew  possesses  and  which  subtilely 
distinguish  him  from  others,  are  in  demand; 
while  those  he  has  not  are  sinking  into  disuse. 
Exactly  that  domination  of  the  reflective  fac- 
ulties over  the  combative,  which  once  made 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

him  slave,  also  saved  him  from  becoming  ex- 
tinct in  wars;  and  the  intellectual  quickness, 
the  far-sighted  keenness,  the  persistent  men- 
tal activity  and  self-control,  which  could  not 
in  those  ages  save  him  from  degradation  or 
compensate  for  his  lack  of  bone  and  muscle 
and  combative  instinct,  are  the  very  qualities 
the  modern  world  demands  and  crowns.  The 
day  of  Goliath  with  his  club  and  his  oaths  is 
fast  passing,  and  the  day  of  David  with  his 
harp  and  skillfully  constructed  sling  is  coming 
near  and  yet  nearer. 

The  qualities  which  give  an  animal,  a  race, 
an  individual,  a  higher  utility  or  social  domi- 
nance must  always  be  influenced  by  any  change 
in  the  environment.  As  the  wheel  of  life 
slowly  revolves,  that  which  was  lowest  comes 
continually  uppermost,  and  that  which  was 
dominant  becomes  subservient. 

It  is  possible  that  women,  after  countless 
ages,  during  which  that  smaller  relative  de- 
velopment in  weight  and  muscularity  which  is 
incident  to  almost  all  females  which  suckle 
their  young,  and  that  lesser  desire  for  pugilism 
inherent  in  almost  all  females  who  bear  their 
young  alive,  rendered  her  lacking  in  the  two 
[223] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

qualities  which  made  for  individual  dominance 
in  her  societies,  may  yet,  in  the  future,  discover 
that  those  changes  in  human  conditions,  which 
have  done  away  with  the  primary  necessity  for 
muscular  force  and  pugilistic  arts,  have  also 
inverted  her  place  in  the  scale  of  social  values. 
It  is  possible  that  the  human  female,  like 
the  Jew,  the  male  of  that  type  farthest  re- 
moved from  the  dominant  male  type  of  the 
past,  may  find  that,  so  far  from  those  qualities 
which,  in  an  earlier  condition,  lessened  her 
social  value  and  power  of  labor,  continuing  to 
do  so,  they  will  increase  it.  That  the  delicacy 
of  hand,  lightness  of  structure,  which  were 
fatal  when  the  dominant  labor  of  life  was  to 
hurl  a  battle-axe  or  move  a  weight,  may  be 
no  restraint  but  even  an  assistance  in  the  in- 
tellectual and  more  delicate  mechanical  fields 
of  labor,  that  the  preponderance  of  nervous 
and  cerebral  over  muscular  material,  and  the 
tendency  towards  preservative  and  creative 
activity  over  pugilistic  and  destructive,  so  far 
from  shutting  her  off  from  the  most  important 
fields  of  human  toil,  may  increase  her  fitness 
for  them !  We  have  no  certain  proof  that  it  is 
so  at  present;  but,  if  woman's  long  years  of 
[224] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

servitude  and  physical  subjection,  and  her  ex- 
perience as  child-bearer  and  protector  of  in- 
fancy, should,  in  any  way,  be  found  in  the 
future  to  have  endowed  her,  as  a  kind  of  sec- 
ondary sexual  characteristic,  with  any  addi- 
tional strength  of  social  instinct,  with  any  ex- 
ceptional width  of  human  sympathy  and  any 
instinctive  comprehension;  then,  it  is  not 
merely  possible,  but  certain,  that,  in  the  ages 
that  are  coming,  in  which  the  labor  of  the 
human  race  will  be  not  mainly  destructive  but 
conservative,  in  which  the  building  up  and 
consolidating  of  humanity,  and  not  continually 
the  inter-destruction  of  part  by  part,  will  be 
the  dominant  activity  of  the  race,  that  woman 
as  woman,  and  by  right  of  that  wherein  she 
differs  from  the  male,  will  have  an  all-impor- 
tant part  to  play  in  the  activity  of  the  race. 

The  matter  is  one  of  curious  and  subtle  in- 
terest, but  what  practically  concerns  the  human 
race  is,  not  which  of  the  two  sexual  halves 
which  must  always  co-exist  is  best  fitted  to 
excel  in  certain  human  labors  in  this  or  that 
direction,  nor  even  which  has  most  to  con- 
tribute to  the  sum-total  of  human  activities; 
but  it  is  this,  that  every  individual  unit  hu- 
[225] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

manity  contains,  irrespective  of  race,  sex,  or 
type,  should  find  exactly  that  field  of  labor 
which  may  most  contribute  to  its  development, 
happiness,  and  health,  and  in  which  its  pe- 
culiar faculties  and  gifts  shall  be  most  effec- 
tively and  beneficially  exerted  for  its  fellows. 
It  matters  nothing,  and  less  than  nothing,  to 
us  as  women,  whether,  of  those  children  we 
bring  into  the  world,  our  sons  should  excel  in 
virtue,  intelligence,  and  activity,  our  daugh- 
ters, or  our  daughters  our  sons ;  so  that,  in  each 
child  we  bring  to  life,  not  one  potentiality  shall 
be  lost,  nor  squandered  on  a  lesser  when  it 
might  have  been  expended  on  a  higher  and 
more  beneficent  task.  So  that  not  one  desirable 
faculty  of  the  marvelous  creatures  we  bring 
into  existence  be  left  uncultivated,  to  us  as 
women,  it  matters  nothing  and  less  than  noth- 
ing, which  sex  type  excels  in  action,  in  knowl- 
edge, or  in  virtue,  so  both  attain  their  best. 
There  is  one  thing  only  on  earth  as  precious 
to  woman  as  the  daughter  who  springs  from 
her  body — it  is  the  son.  There  is  one  thing 
only  dearer  to  the  woman  than  herself — it  is 
the  man.  As  no  sane  human  concerns  him- 
self as  to  whether  the  right  or  left  ventricle 
[226] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

of  his  heart  works  most  satisfactorily,  or  is 
most  essential  to  his  well-being,  so  both  be 
perfect  in  health  and  activity;  as  no  sane 
woman  distresses  herself  lest  her  right  breast 
should  not  excel  the  left  in  beauty  and  use; 
so  no  sane  man  or  woman  questions  over  the 
relative  perfections  of  male  and  female.  In 
love  there  is  no  first  nor  last.  What  we  re- 
quest of  life  is  that  the  tools  should  be  given 
to  his  hand  or  hers  who  can  handle  them;  that 
the  least  efficient  should  not  be  forced  into 
the  place  of  the  more  efficient,  and  that  an 
artificially  drawn  line  should  never  repress  the 
activities  of  the  individual  creature  which  we 
as  women  bring  into  the  world. 

But  it  may  also  be  said  to  us,  "What,  and 
if  all  your  dreams  and  hopes  for  woman  and 
the  future  of  the  race  be  based  on  air?  What 
if,  desirable  as  it  is  that  woman  should  not 
become  practically  dependent  on  her  sexual 
function  alone,  and  should  play  at  least  as 
great  a  part  in  the  productive  labor  of  the  race 
in  the  future  as  she  played  in  that  of  the  past 
— what  if  woman  cannot  take  the  same  vast 
share  in  the  complex  and  largely  mental  labor 
fields  of  the  future  as  in  the  largely  physical 
[227] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

fields  of  the  past?  What  if,  in  spite  of  all 
her  effort  and  sacrifice  to  attain  this  end,  ex- 
actly now  when  the  labor  of  civilized  societies 
becomes  mental  rather  than  mechanical,  woman 
be  found  wanting?" 

In  Swiss  valleys  to-day  the  traveller  comes 
sometimes  on  the  figure  of  a  solitary  woman 
climbing  the  mountain-side,  on  her  broad 
shoulders  a  mighty  burden  of  fodder  or  ma- 
nure she  is  bearing  up  for  the  cattle,  or  to  the 
patch  of  cultivated  land.  Steady,  unshrink- 
ing eyes  look  out  at  you  from  beneath  the 
deeply  seamed  forehead,  and  a  strand  of  hair, 
perhaps  almost  as  white  as  the  mountain  snows 
on  the  peaks  above,  escapes  from  under  the 
edge  of  the  binding  handkerchief.  The  face 
is  seamed  and  seared  with  the  stern  marks  of 
toil  and  endurance,  as  the  mountain-side  is  with 
marks  of  storm  and  avalanche.  It  is  the  face 
of  one  who  has  brought  men  into  the  world 
in  labor  and  sorrow,  and  toiled  mightily  to 
sustain  them;  and  dead  must  be  the  mind  to 
the  phases  of  human  existence,  who  does  not 
see  in  that  toilworn  figure  one  of  the  mighty 
pillars  which  have  in  the  long  ages  of  the  past 
sustained  the  life  of  humanity  on  earth  and 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

made  possible  its  later  developments ;  and  much 
must  the  tinsel  of  life  have  dazzled  him,  who 
fails  to  mark  it  with  reverence  and,  metaphor- 
ically, to  bow  his  head  before  it — the  type  of 
the  mighty  laboring  woman  who  has  built  up 
life. 

But,  it  may  be  said,  what  if,  in  the  ages 
to  come,  it  should  never  again  be  possible  for 
any  man  to  stand  bowed  with  the  same  respect 
in  the  presence  of  any  other  of  earth's  mighty 
toilers,  who  shall  also  be  mother  and  woman? 
What  if  she,  who  could  combine  motherhood 
with  the  most  unending  muscular  toil,  will  fall 
flaccid  and  helpless  where  the  labor  becomes 
mental?  What  if,  struggle  as  she  will,  she  can 
become  nothing  in  the  future  but  the  pet  pug- 
dog  of  the  race,  lying  on  its  sofa,  or  the  Italian 
greyhound,  shivering  in  its  silken  coat  ?  What 
if  woman,  in  spite  of  her  most  earnest  aspira- 
tions and  determined  struggles,  be  destined  to 
failure  in  the  new  world  that  is  rising  because 
of  inherent  incapacity? 

There  are  many  replies  which  may  be  made 

to  such  a  suggestion.     It  is  often  said  with 

truth  that  the  ordinary  occupations  of  woman 

in  the  past  and  present,  and  in  all  classes  of 

[229] 


society  in  which  she  is  not  parasitic,  do  de- 
mand, and  have  always  demanded  a  very  high 
versatility  and  mental  activity,  as  well  as  phys- 
ical, j  The  medieval  baron's  wife  who  guided 
her  large  household  probably  had  to  expend 
far  more  pure  intellect  in  doing  so  than  the 
baron  in  his  hunting  and  fighting.  The  wife 
of  the  city  accountant  probably  expends  to- 
day more  reason,  imagination,  forethought, 
and  memory  on  the  management  of  her  small 
household,  than  he  in  his  simpler,  monotonous 
arithmetical  toil.  As  there  is  no  cause  for 
supposing  that  the  tailor  or  shoemaker  needs 
less  intellect  in  his  calling  than  the  soldier  or 
prize-fighter,  so  there  is  nothing  to  suggest 
that,  in  the  past,  woman  has  not  expended  as 
much  pure  intellect  in  the  mass  of  her  callings 
as  the  man  in  his. 

As  for  those  highly  specialized  intellectual 
occupations,  in  which  long  and  uninterrupted 
training  tending  to  one  point  is  necessary, 
such  as  the  liberal  professions  and  arts,  al- 
though woman  has  practically  been  excluded 
from  the  requisite  training,  and  the  freedom 
to  place  herself  in  the  positions  in  which  they 
can  be  pursued,  yet,  by  force  of  innate  genius 
[230] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

and  gifts  in  such  directions,  she  has  contin- 
ually broken  through  the  seemingly  insuper- 
able obstacles,  and  again  and  again  taken  her 
place  beside  man  in  those  fields  of  labor ;  show- 
ing thereby  not  merely  aptitude  but  passion- 
ate and  determined  inclination  in  those  direc- 
tions. 

With  equal  truth,  it  is  often  remarked  that, 
when  as  an  independent  hereditary  sovereign, 
woman  has  been  placed  in  the  only  position 
in  which  she  has  been  able  freely  and  fully 
to  express  her  own  individuality,  and  though 
selected  at  random  by  fate  from  the  mass  of 
women,  by  the  accident  of  birth  or  marriage, 
she  has  shown  in  a  large  percentage  of  cases 
that  the  female  has  the  power  to  command, 
organize,  and  succeed  in  one  of  the  most  exact- 
ing and  complex  of  human  employments,  the 
government  of  nations.  From  the  days  of 
Amalasontha  to  Isabella  of  Spain,  Elizabeth 
of  England,  and  Catherine  of  Russia,  women 
have  not  failed  to  grasp  the  large  impersonal 
aspects  of  life,  and  successfully  and  power- 
fully to  control  them,  when  placed  in  a  posi- 
tion in  which  it  was  demanded. 

It  may  also  be  stated,  and  is  sometimes, 
[231] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

with  so  much  iteration  as  to  become  almost 
wearisome,  that  women's  adequacy  in  the 
modern  fields  of  intellectual  or  skilled  manual 
labor  is  no  more  to-day  an  open  matter  for 
debate,  than  the  number  of  modern  women 
who,  as  senior  wranglers,  doctors,  etc.,  have 
already  successfully  entered  the  new  fields, 
and  the  high  standard  attained  by  women  in 
all  university  examinations  to  which  they  are 
admitted,  and  their  universal  success  in  the 
administration  of  parochial  matters,  wherever 
they  have  been  allowed  to  share  it,  proves  their 
intellectual  and  moral  fitness  for  the  new  forms 
of  labor. 

All  these  statements  are  certainly  interest- 
ing, and  may  be  unanswerable.  And  yet — if 
the  truth  be  told,  it  is  not  ultimately  on  these 
grounds  that  many  of  us  base  our  hope  and  our 
certitude  with  regard  to  the  future  of  woman. 
Our  conviction  as  to  the  plenitude  of  her 
powers  for  the  adequate  performance  of  lofty 
labors  in  these  new  fields  springs  not  at  all 
from  a  categorical  enumeration  of  the  attain- 
ments or  performances  of  individual  women  or 
bodies  of  women  in  the  past  or  present ;  it  has 
another  source. 

[232] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

There  was  a  bird's  egg  once,  picked  up  by 
chance  upon  the  ground,  and  those  who  found 
it  bore  it  home  and  placed  it  under  a  barn- 
door fowl.  And  in  time  the  chick  bred  out, 
and  those  who  had  found  it  chained  it  by  the 
leg  to  a  log,  lest  it  should  stray  and  be  lost. 
And  by  and  by  they  gathered  round  it,  and 
speculated  as  to  what  the  bird  might  be.  One 
said,  "It  is  surely  a  waterfowl,  a  duck,  or  it 
may  be  a  goose;  if  we  took  it  to  the  water  it 
would  swim  and  gabble."  But  another  said, 
"It  has  no  webs  to  its  feet;  it  is  a  barn-yard 
fowl;  should  you  let  it  loose  it  will  scratch 
and  cackle  with  the  others  on  the  dung-heap." 
But  a  third  speculated,  "Look  now  at  its 
curved  beak;  no  doubt  it  is  a  parrot,  and  can 
crack  nuts !"  But  a  fourth  said,  "No,  but  look 
at  its  wings;  perhaps  it  is  a  bird  of  great 
flight."  But  several  cried,  "Nonsense  I  No 
one  has  ever  seen  it  fly!  Why  should  it  fly? 
Can  you  suppose  that  a  thing  can  do  a  thing 
which  no  one  has  ever  seen  it  do?"  And  the 
bird,  with  its  leg  chained  close  to  the  log, 
preened  its  wings.  So  they  sat  about  it,  spec- 
ulating, and  discussing  it:  and  one  said  this, 
and  another  that.  And  all  the  while  as  they 
[233] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

talked  the  bird  sat  motionless,  with  its  gaze 
fixed  on  the  clear,  blue  sky  above  it.  And  one 
said,  "Suppose  we  let  the  creature  loose  to  see 
what  it  will  do?" — and  the  bird  shivered.  But 
the  others  cried,  "It  is  too  valuable;  it  might 
get  lost.  If  it  were  to  try  to  fly  it  might  fall 
down  and  break  its  neck."  And  the  bird, 
with  its  foot  chained  to  the  log,  sat  looking 
upward  into  the  clear  sky;  the  sky,  in  which 
it  had  never  been — for  the  bird — the  bird, 
knew  what  it  would  do — because  it  was  an 
eaglet! 

There  is  one  woman  known  to  many  of  us, 
as  each  human  creature  knows  but  one  on 
earth;  and  it  is  upon  our  knowledge  of  that 
woman  that  we  base  our  certitude. 

For  those  who  do  not  know  her,  and  have 
not  this  ground,  it  is  probably  profitable  and 
necessary  that  they  painfully  collect  isolated 
facts  and  then  speculate  upon  them,  and  base 
whatever  views  they  should  form  upon  these 
collections.  It  might  even  be  profitable  that 
they  should  form  no  definite  opinions  at  all  but 
wait  till  the  ages  of  practical  experience  have 
put  doubt  to  rest.  For  those  of  us  who  have  a 
ground  of  knowledge  which  we  cannot  trans- 
[234.] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

mit  to  outsiders,  it  is  perhaps  more  profitable 
to  act  fearlessly  than  to  argue. 

Finally,  it  may  be  objected  to  the  entrance 
of  woman  to  the  new  fields  of  labor,  and  in 
effect  it  is  often  said — "What  if  all  you  have 
sought  be  granted  you — if  it  be  fully  agreed 
that  woman's  ancient  fields  of  toil  are  slip- 
ping from  her,  and  that,  if  she  do  not  find 
new,  she  must  fall  into  a  state  of  sexual  para- 
sitism, dependent  on  her  reproductive  func- 
tions alone;  and  granted,  that,  doing  this,  she 
must  degenerate,  and  that  from  her  degenera- 
tion must  arise  the  degeneration  and  arrest  of 
development  of  the  males  as  well  as  of  the 
females  of  her  race;  and  granting  also,  fully, 
that  in  the  past  woman  has  borne  one  full  half, 
and  often  more  than  one  half,  of  the  weight 
of  the  productive  labors  of  her  societies,  in  ad- 
dition to  child-bearing;  and  allowing  more 
fqlly  that  she  may  be  as  well  able  to  sustain 
her  share  in  the  intellectual  labors  of  the  future 
as  in  the  more  mechanical  labors  of  the  past; 
granting  all  this,  may  there  not  be  one  aspect 
of  the  question  left  out  of  consideration  which 
may  reverse  all  conclusions  as  to  the  desira- 
[235] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

bility,  and  the  human  good  to  be  attained  by 
woman's  enlarged  freedom  and  her  entering 
into  the  new  fields  of  toil?  What  if  the  in- 
creased culture  and  mental  activity  of  woman 
necessary  for  her  entrance  into  the  new  fields, 
however  desirable  in  other  ways  for  herself 
and  the  race,  should  result  in  a  diminution,  or 
an  absolute  abolition  of  the  sexual  attraction 
and  affection,  which  in  all  ages  of  the  past  has 
bound  the  two  halves  of  humanity  together? 
What  if,  though  the  stern  and  unlovely  manual 
labors  of  the  past  have  never  affected  her  at- 
tractiveness for  the  male  of  her  own  society, 
nor  his  for  her,  yet  the  performance  by  woman 
of  intellectual  labors,  or  complex  and  interest- 
ing manual  labor,  and  her  increased  intelli- 
gence and  width,  should  render  the  male 
objectionable  to  her,  and  the  woman  unde- 
sirable to  the  male ;  so  that  the  very  race  itself 
might  become  extinct  through  the  dearth  of 
sexual  affection?  What  if  the  woman  ceases 
to  value  the  son  she  bears,  and  to  feel  desire 
for  and  tenderness  to  the  man  who  begets 
him;  and  the  man  to  value  and  desire  the 
woman  and  her  offspring?  Would  not  such 
a  result  exceed,  or  at  least  equal,  in  its  evil 
[236] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

to  humanity,  anything  which  could  result 
from  the  degeneration  and  parasitism  of 
woman?  Would  it  not  be  well,  if  there  exist 
any  possibility  of  this  danger,  that  woman, 
however  conscious  that  she  can  perform  social 
labor  as  nobly  and  successfully  under  the  new 
conditions  of  life  as  the  old,  should  yet  con- 
sciously, and  deliberately,  with  her  eyes  open, 
sink  into  a  state  of  pure  intellectual  parasitism, 
with  all  its  attendant  evils,  rather  than  face  the 
more  irreparable  loss  which  her  development 
and  the  exercise  of  her  powers  might  entail? 
Would  it  not  be  well  she  should  deliberately 
determine,  as  the  lesser  of  two  evils,  to  dwarf 
herself  and  limit  her  activities  and  the  expan- 
sion of  her  faculties,  rather  than  that  any  risk 
should  be  run  of  the  bond  of  desire  and  emotion 
between  the  two  sexual  halves  of  humanity  be- 
ing severed?  If  the  race  is  to  decay  and  be- 
come extinct  on  earth,  might  it  not  as  well  be 
through  the  parasitism  and  decay  of  woman,  as 
through  the  decay  of  sex  instinct? 

It  is  not  easy  to  reply  with  rationality  or 

even  gravity  to  a  supposition  which  appears  to 

be  based  on  the  conception  that  a  sudden  and 

entire  inversion  of  the  deepest  of  those  elements 

[237] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

on  which  human,  and  even  animal,  life  on  the 
globe  is  based,  is  possible  from  so  inadequate 
a  cause:  and  it  might  well  be  passed  silently, 
were  it  not  that,  under  some  form  or  other, 
this  argument  frequently  recurs,  now  in  a  more 
rational  and  then  in  a  more  irrational  form; 
constituting  sometimes  an  objection,  in  even 
moderately  intelligent  minds,  to  the  entrance 
of  woman  into  the  new  fields  of  labor. 

It  must  be  at  once  frankly  admitted  that, 
were  there  the  smallest  danger  in  this  direction, 
the  sooner  woman  laid  aside  all  endeavor  in  the 
direction  of  increased  knowledge  and  the  at- 
tainment of  new  fields  of  activity,  the  better 
-for  herself  and  for  the  race. 

When  one  considers  the  part  which  sexual 
attraction  plays  in  the  order  of  sentient  life 
on  the  globe,  from  the  almost  unconscious  at- 
tractions which  draw  ameboid  globule  to 
ameboid  globule,  on  through  the  endless  pro- 
gressive forms  of  lif e ;  till  in  monogamous  birds 
it  expresses  itself  in  song  and  complex  court- 
ship and  the  life-long  conjugal  affection  of 
mates;  and  which,  in  the  human  race  itself, 
passing  through  various  forms,  from  the  im- 
perative but  almost  purely  physical  attraction 
[238] 


of  savage  male  and  female  for  each  other,  till 
in  the  highly  developed  male  and  female  it 
assumes  its  esthetic  and  intellectual  but  not  less 
imperative  form,  couching  itself  in  the  songs 
of  the  poet  and  the  deathless  fidelity  of  fully 
developed  man  and  woman  to  each  other, 
we  find  it  not  only  everywhere  forming  the 
groundwork  on  which  is  based  sentient  exis- 
tence, never  eradicable,  though  infinitely  varied 
in  its  external  forms  of  expression.  When  we 
consider  that  in  the  human  world,  from  the 
battles  and  dances  of  savages  to  the  intrigues 
and  entertainments  of  modern  courts  and 
palaces,  the  attraction  of  man  and  woman  for 
each  other  has  played  an  unending  part;  and 
that  the  most  fierce  ascetic  religious  enthusi- 
asm through  the  ages,  the  flagellations  and 
starvations  in  endless  nunneries  and  monas- 
steries,  have  never  been  able  to  extirpate  nor 
seriously  to  weaken  for  a  moment  the  master 
dominance  of  this  emotion ;  that  the  lowest  and 
most  brutal  ignorance,  and  the  highest  intel- 
lectual culture  leave  mankind,  equally,  though 
in  different  forms,  amenable  to  its  mastery; 
that,  whether  in  the  brutal  guffaw  of  sex 
laughter  which  rings  across  the  drinking  bars 
[239] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

of  our  modern  cities,  and  rises  from  the  com- 
fortable armchairs  in  fashionable  clubs;  or  in 
the  poet's  dreams,  and  the  noblest  conjugal 
affection  of  men  and  women  linked  together 
for  life,  it  plays  still  to-day  on  earth  the  part  it 
played  when  hoary  monsters  plowed  through 
Silurian  slime,  and  that  still  it  forms  as  ever 
the  warp  on  which  in  the  loom  of  human  life 
the  web  is  woven,  and  runs  as  a  thread  never 
absent  through  every  design  and  pattern  which 
constitutes  an  individual  existence  on  earth: — 
not  only  does  sexual  attraction  appear  ineradi- 
cable, but  it  is  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  that 
attraction  of  sex  towards  sex,  which,  with 
hunger  and  thirst,  lie,  as  the  triune  instincts, 
at  the  base  of  animal  life,  should  ever  be  ex- 
terminable  or  in  any  way  modifiable  by  the 
comparatively  superficial  changes  resulting 
from  the  performance  of  this  or  that  form 
of  labor,  or  the  little  more  or  less  of  knowl- 
edge in  one  direction  or  another. 

That  the  female  who  runs  steam-driven 
looms,  producing  scores  of  yards  of  linen  in  a 
day,  should  therefore  desire  less  the  fellowship 
of  her  corresponding  male  than  had  she  toiled 
at  a  spinning-wheel  with  hand  and  foot  to  pro- 
[240] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

duce  one  yard ;  that  the  male  should  desire  less 
of  the  companionship  of  the  woman  who 
spends  the  morning  in  doctoring  babies  in  her 
consulting-room,  according  to  the  formularies 
of  the  pharmacopoeia,  than  she  who  of  old 
spent  it  on  the  hillside  collecting  simples  for 
remedies ;  that  the  woman  who  paints  a  modern 
picture  or  designs  a  modern  vase  should  be  less 
lovable  by  man  than  her  ancestor  who  shaped 
the  first  primitive  pot  and  ornamented  it  with 
zigzag  patterns  was  to  the  man  of  her  day  and 
age;  that  the  woman  who  contributes  to  the 
support  of  her  family  by  giving  legal  opinions 
will  less  desire  motherhood  and  wifehood  than 
she  who  in  the  past  contributed  to  the  support 
of  her  household  by  bending  on  hands  and 
knees  over  her  grindstone,  or  scrubbing  floors, 
and  that  the  former  should  be  less  valued  by 
man  than  the  latter — these  are  suppositions 
which  it  is  difficult  to  regard  as  consonant 
with  any  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  the 
laws  by  which  it  is  dominated. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  it  be  supposed  that  the 

possession  of  wealth  or  the  means  of  earning 

it  makes  the  human  female  objectionable  to 

the  male,  all  history  and  all  daily  experience 

[241] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

negate  it.  The  eager  hunt  for  heiresses,  in  all 
ages  and  social  conditions,  makes  it  obvious 
that  the  human  male  has  a  strong  tendency  to 
value  the  female  who  can  contribute  to  the 
family  expenditure;  and  the  case  is  yet,  we 
believe,  unrecorded  of  a  male  who,  attracted 
to  a  female,  becomes  averse  to  her  on  finding 
she  has  material  good.  The  female  doctor 
or  lawyer  earning  a  thousand  a  year  will  al- 
ways, and  to-day  certainly  does,  find  more 
suitors  than  had  she  remained  a  governess  or 
cook,  laboring  as  hard,  earning  thirty  pounds. 
While  if  the  statement  that  the  female  en- 
tering on  new  fields  of  labor  will  cease  to  be 
lovable  to  the  male  be  based  on  the  fact  that 
she  will  then  be  free,  all  history  and  all  human 

experience  yet  more  negate  its  truth< The 

study  of  all  races  in  all  ages  proves  that  the 
greater  the  freedom  of  woman,  the  higher  the 
sexual  value  put  upon  her  by  the  males  of 
that  society.  /  The  three  squaws  who  walk  be- 
hind the  Indian,  whom  he  has  captured  in 
battle  or  bought  for  a  few  axes  or  lengths 
of  tobacco,  and  over  whom  he  exercises  the 
right  of  life  and  death,  are  probably  all  three 
of  infinitesimal  value  in  his  eyes,  compared 
[242] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

with  the  value  of  his  single,  free  wife  to  one  of 
our  ancient,  monogamous  German  ancestors; 
while  the  hundred  wives  and  concubines  pur- 
chased by  a  Turkish  pasha  have  probably  not 
even  an  approximate  value  in  his  eyes,  when 
compared  with  the  value  thousands  of  modern 
European  males  set  upon  the  one  compara- 
tively free  woman,  whom  they  have  won,  often 
only  after  a  long  and  tedious  courtship. 

So  axiomatic  is  the  statement  that  the  value 
of  the  female  to  the  male  varies  as  her  freedom, 
that,  given  an  account  of  any  human  society 
in  which  the  individual  female  is  highly  valued, 
it  will  be  perfectly  safe  to  infer  the  compara- 
tive social  freedom  of  woman;  and,  given  a 
statement  as  to  the  high  degree  of  freedom  of 
woman  in  any  society,  it  will  be  safe  to  infer 
the  great  sexual  value  of  the  individual  woman 
to  man. 

Finally,  if  the  suggestion,  that  men  and 
women  will  cease  to  be  attractive  to  one  an- 
other if  women  enter  modern  fields  of  labor, 
be  based  on  the  fact  that  her  doing  so  may 
increase  her  intelligence  and  enlarge  her  intel- 
lectual horizon,  it  must  be  replied  that  the 
whole  trend  of  human  history  absolutely  ne- 
[243] 


WOMAN   AND   LABOR 

gates  the  supposition.  There  is  no  ground  for 
the  assumption  that  increased  intelligence  and 
intellectual  power  diminish  sexual  emotion  in 
the  human  creature  of  either  sex.  The  igno- 
rant savage,  whether  in  ancient  or  modern 
societies,  who  violates  and  then  clubs  a  female 
into  submission,  may  be  dominated,  and  is,  by 
sex  emotions  of  a  certain  class;  but  not  less 
dominated  have  been  the  most  cultured  and 
powerful  and  highly  differentiated  male  intel- 
ligences that  the  race  has  produced.  A  Milll 
a  Shelley,  a  Goethe,  a  Schiller,  a  Pericles,^ 
have  not  been  more  noted  for  vast  intellectual 
powers,  than  for  the  depth  and  intensity  of 
their  sexual  emotions.  And,  if  possible,  with 
the  human  female,  the  relation  between  in- 
tensity of  sexual  emotion  and  highly  intel- 
lectual gifts  has  been  yet  closer.  The  life  of 
a  Sophia  Kovalevsky,  a  George  Eliot,  an 
Elizabeth  Browning  has  not  been  more 
marked  by  a  rare  development  of  the  intellect 
than  by  deep  passionate  sexual  emotions.  Nor 
throughout  the  history  of  the  race  has  high  in- 
telligence and  intellectual  power  ever  tended  to 
make  either  male  or  female  unattractive  to 
those  of  the  opposite  sex. 

[244] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

The  merely  brilliantly  attired  and  unin- 
telligent woman  probably  never  awakened  the 
same  intensity  of  profound  sex  emotion,  even 
among  the  men  of  her  own  type,  which  fol- 
lowed a  George  Sand,  who  attracted  to  herself  \ 
with  deathless  force  some  of  the  most  noted  men  > 
of  her  generation,  even  when,  nearing  middle 
age,  stout,  and  attired  in  rusty  and  inartistic 
black,  she  was  to  be  found  rolling  her  cigarettes 
in  a  dingy  office,  scorning  all  the  external 
adornments  with  which  feebler  females  seek 
to  supply  a  hidden  deficiency.  Probably  no 
more  hopeless  mistake  could  be  made  by  an 
ascetic  seeking  to  extirpate  sex  emotion  and 
the  attraction  of  the  sexes  for  one  another,  than 
were  he  to  imagine  that  in  increasing  virility, 
intelligence,  and  knowledge  this  end  could  be 
attained.  He  might  thereby  differentiate  and 
greatly  concentrate  the  emotions,  but  they 
would  be  intensified;  as  a  widely  spread,  shal- 
low, sluggish  stream  would  not  be  annihilated 
but  increased  in  force  and  activity  by  being 
turned  into  a  sharply  defined,  clear-cut  course. 

And  if,  further,  we  turn  to  those  secondary 
manifestations  of  sexual  emotion,  which  ex- 
press themselves  in  the  relations  of  human 
[245] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

progenitors  to  their  offspring,  we  shall  find, 
if  possible  more  markedly,  that  increase  of  in- 
telligence and  virility  does  not  diminish  but 
increases  the  strength  of  the  affections.  As 
the  primitive,  ignorant  male,  often  willingly 
selling  his  offspring  or  exposing  his  female 
infants  to  death,  often  develops,  with  increase 
of  culture  and  intelligence,  into  the  often  ex- 
tremely devoted  and  self-sacrificing  male 
progenitor  of  civilized  societies;  so,  yet  even 
more  markedly,  does  the  female  relation  with 
her  offspring  become  intensified  and  perma- 
nent, as  culture  and  intelligence  and  virility  in- 
crease. 

The  Bushwoman,  like  the  lowest  female  bar- 
barians in  our  own  societies,  will  often  readily 
dispose  of  her  infant  son  for  a  bottle  of  spirits 
or  a  little  coin;  and  even  among  somewhat 
more  mentally  developed  females,  strong  as 
is  the  affection  of  the  average  female  for  her 
newborn  offspring,  the  closeness  of  the  rela- 
tion between  mother  and  child  tends  rapidly 
to  shrink  as  time  passes,  so  that  by  the  time  of 
adolescence  the  relation  between  mother  and 
son  becomes  little  more  than  a  remembrance  of 
a  close  inter-union  which  once  existed.  It  is, 
[246] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

perhaps,  seldom,  till  the  very  highest  point  of 
intellectual  culture  and  mental  virility  has  been 
reached  by  the  human  female,  that  her  relation 
with  her  male  offspring  becomes  a  permanent 
and  active  and  dominant  factor  in  the  lives  of 
both. 

The  concentrated  and  all-absorbing  affec- 
tion and  fellowship  which  existed  between 
the  greatest  female  intellect  France  has  pro- 
duced and  the  son  she  bore,  dominating  both 
lives  to  the  end,  the  fellowship  of  the  English 
historian  with  his  mother,  who  remained  his 
chosen  companion  and  the  sharer  of  all  his  la- 
bors through  life,  the  relation  of  St.  Augustine 
to  his  mother,  and  countless  others,  are  rela- 
tions almost  inconceivable  where  the  woman  is 
not  of  commanding  and  active  intelligence,  and 
where  the  passion  of  mere  physical  instinct  is 
not  completed  by  the  passion  of  the  intellect 
and  spirit. 

There  appears,  then,  from  the  study  of 
human  nature  in  the  past,  no  ground  for  sup- 
posing that  if,  as  a  result  of  woman's  adopting 
new  forms  of  labor,  she  should  become  more 
free,  more  wealthy,  or  more  actively  intelli- 
gent, that  this  could  in  any  way  diminish  her 
[247] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

need  of  the  physical  and  mental  comrade- 
ship of  man,  nor  his  need  of  her;  nor  that  it 
would  affect  their  secondary  sexual  relations 
as  progenitors,  save  by  deepening,  concentrat- 
ing, and  extending  throughout  life  the  parental 
emotions.  The  conception  that  man's  and 
woman's  need  of  each  other  could  be  touched, 
or  the  emotions  binding  the  sexes  obliterated, 
by  any  mere  change  in  the  form  of  labor  per- 
formed by  the  woman  of  the  race,  is  as  gro- 
tesque in  its  impossibility  as  the  suggestion 
that  the  replacing  of  a  shell  on  the  seashore  this 
way  or  that  might  destroy  the  action  of  the 
earth's  great  tidal  wave. 

But,  it  may  be  objected,  "If  there  be  ab- 
solutely no  ground  for  the  formation  of  such 
an  opinion,  how  comes  it  that,  in  one  form  or 
another,  it  is  so  often  expressed  by  persons 
who  object  to  the  entrance  of  woman  into  new 
or  intellectual  fields  of  labor?  Where  there 
is  smoke  there  must  also  be  fire."  To  which 
it  may  be  replied,  "Without  fire,  no  smoke; 
but  very  often  the  appearance  of  smoke  where 
neither  smoke  nor  fire  exist!" 

The  fact  that  a  statement  is  frequently  made 
or  a  view  held  forms  no  presumptive  ground 
[24-8] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

of  its  truth;  but  it  is  undoubtedly  a  ground  for 
supposing  that  there  is  an  appearance  or  sem- 
blance which  makes  it  appear  truth,  and 
which  suggests  it.  The  universally  enter- 
tained conception  that  the  sun  moved  round  the 
world  was  not  merely  false,  but  the  reverse  of 
the  truth;  all  that  was  required  for  its  incep- 
tion was  a  fallacious  appearance  suggesting  it. 

When  we  examine  narrowly  the  statement, 
that  the  entrance  of  woman  into  the  new  fields 
of  labor,  with  its  probably  resulting  greater 
freedom  of  action,  economic  independence  and 
wider  culture,  may  result  in  a  severance  be- 
tween the  sexes,  it  becomes  clear  what  that 
fallacious  appearance  is,  which  suggests  this. 

The  entrance  of  a  woman  into  new  fields  of 
labor,  though  bringing  her  increased  freedom 
and  economic  independence,  and  necessitating 
increased  mental  training  and  wider  knowl- 
edge, could  not  extinguish  the  primordial  phys- 
ical instinct  which  draws  sex  to  sex  through- 
out all  the  orders  of  sentient  life ;  and  still  less 
could  it  annihilate  that  subtler  mental  need, 
which,  as  humanity  develops,  draws  sex  to  sex 
for  emotional  fellowship  and  close  intercourse ; 
but,  it  might,  and  undoubtedly  would,  power- 
[249] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

fully  react;  and  readjust  the  relations  of  cer- 
tain men  with  certain  women! 

While  the  attraction,  physical  and  intellec- 
tual, which  binds  sex  to  sex  would  remain  the 
same  in  volume  and  intensity,  the  forms  in 
which  it  would  express  itself,  and,  above  all, 
the  relative  power  of  individuals  to  command 
the  gratification  of  their  instincts  and  desires, 
would  be  fundamentally  altered,  and  in  many 
cases  inverted. 

In  the  barbarian  state  of  societies,  where 
physical  force  dominates,  it  is  the  most  muscu- 
lar and  pugilistically  and  brutally  and  animally 
successful  male  who  captures  and  possesses  the 
largest  number  of  females;  and  no  doubt  he 
would  be  justified  in  regarding  any  social 
change  which  gave  to  woman  a  larger  free- 
dom of  choice,  and  which  would  so  perhaps 
give  to  the  less  brutal  but  perhaps  more  intelli- 
gent male  whom  the  woman  might  select,  an 
equal  opportunity  for  the  gratification  of  his 
sexual  wishes  and  for  the  producing  of  off- 
spring, as  a  serious  loss.  And,  from  the 
purely  personal  standpoint,  he  would  un- 
doubtedly be  right  in  dreading  anything  which 
tended  to  free  woman.  But  he  would  mani- 
[250] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

festly  not  have  been  justified  in  asserting  that 
woman's  increased  freedom  of  choice,  or  the 
fact  that  the  other  men  would  share  his  ad- 
vantage in  the  matter  of  obtaining  female  com- 
panionship, would  in  any  way  lessen  the 
amount  of  sexual  emotion  or  the  tenderness  of 
relation  between  the  two  halves  of  humanity. 
He  would  not  by  brute  force  possess  himself 
of  so  many  females  nor  have  so  large  a  circle 
of  choice,  under  the  new  conditions;  but  what 
he  lost,  others  would  gain;  and  the  intensity 
of  the  sex  emotions  and  the  nearness  and  pas- 
sion of  the  relation  between  the  sexes  be  in 
no  way  touched. 

In  our  civilized  societies,  as  they  exist  to- 
day, woman  possesses  (more  often  perhaps  in 
appearance  than  reality!)  a  somewhat  greater 
freedom  of  sexual  selection;  in  modern  so- 
cieties she  is  no  longer  captured  by  muscular 
force,  but  there  are  still  conditions  entirely  un- 
connected with  sex  attractions  and  affections, 
which  yet  largely  dominate  the  sex  relations. 

It  is  not  the  man  of  the  strong  arm,  but  the 
man  of  the  long  purse,  who  unduly  and  arti- 
ficially dominates  in  the  sexual  world  to-day. 
Practically,  wherever  in  the  modern  world 
[251] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

woman  is  wholly  or  partially  dependent  for  her 
means  of  support  on  the  existence  of  her  sexual 
functions,  she  is  dependent  more  or  less  on 
the  male's  power  to  support  her  in  their  exer- 
cise, and  her  freedom  of  choice  is  practically 
so  far  limited.  Probably  three-fourths  of  the 
sexual  unions  in  our  modern  European  so- 
cieties, whether  in  the  illegal  or  recognized  legal 
forms,  are  dominated  by  or  largely  influenced 
by  the  sex  purchasing  power  of  the  male. 
With  regard  to  the  large  and  savage  insti- 
tution of  prostitution,  which  still  lies  as  a  can- 
cer embedded  in  the  heart  of  all  our  modern 
civilized  societies,  this  is  obviously  and  nakedly 
the  case;  the  wealth  of  the  male  as  compared 
to  the  female  being,  with  hideous  obtrusiveness, 
its  foundation  and  source  of  life.  But  the 
purchasing  power  of  the  male  as  compared  with 
the  poverty  of  the  female  is  not  less  painfully, 
if  a  little  less  obtrusively,  displayed  in  those 
layers  of  society  lying  nearer  the  surface. 
From  the  fair,  effete  young  girl  of  the  wealthier 
classes  in  her  city  boudoir,  who  weeps  copiously 
as  she  tells  you  she  cannot  marry  the  man  she 
loves,  because  he  has  only  two  hundred  a  year 
and  cannot  afford  to  keep  her,  to  the  father 


who  demands  frankly  of  his  daughter's  suitor 
how  much  he  can  settle  on  her  before  consent- 
ing to  his  acceptance,  the  fact  remains,  that, 
under  existing  conditions,  not  the  amount  of 
sex  affection  and  attraction,  but  the  extraneous 
question  of  the  material  possessions  of  the  male, 
determines  to  a  large  extent  the  relation  of  the 
sexes.  The  parasitic,  helpless  youth  who  has 
failed  in  his  studies,  who  possesses  neither  viril- 
ity, nor  charm  of  person,  nor  strength  of  mind, 
but  who  possesses  wealth,  has  a  far  greater 
chance  of  securing  the  life  companionship  of 
the  fairest  maid,  than  her  brother's  tutor,  who 
may  be  possessed  of  every  manly  and  physical 
grace  and  mental  gift;  and  the  ancient  liber- 
tine, possessed  of  material  good,  has,  especially 
among  the  so-called  upper  classes  of  our  socie- 
ties, a  far  greater  chance  of  securing  the  sex 
companionship  of  any  woman  he  desires  as 
wife,  mistress,  or  prostitute,  than  the  most 
physically  attractive  and  mentally  developed 
male,  who  may  have  nothing  to  offer  to  the 
dependent  female  but  affection  and  sexual 
companionship. 

To  the  male,  whenever  and  wherever  he  ex- 
ists in  our  societies,  who  depends  mainly  for 
[253] 


WOMAN   AND    LABOR 

his  power  for  procuring  the  sex  relation  he 
desires,  not  on  his  power  of  winning  and  re- 
taining personal  affection,  but  on  the  purchas- 
ing power  of  his  possessions  as  compared  to 
the  poverty  of  the  females  of  his  society,  the 
personal  loss  would  be  seriously  and  at  once 
felt,  of  any  social  change  which  gave  to  the 
woman  a  larger  economic  independence  and 
therefore  greater  freedom  of  sexual  choice. 
It  is  not  an  imaginary  danger  which  the  young 
dude — of  that  type  which  sits  in  the  front  row 
of  the  stalls  in  a  theater,  with  sloping  fore- 
head and  feeble  jaw,  sucking  at  intervals  the 
top  of  his  gilt-headed  cane,  and  watching  the 
unhappy  women  who  dance  for  gold — sees 
looming  before  him,  as  he  lisps  out  his  deep  dis- 
approval of  increased  knowledge  and  the  free- 
dom of  obtaining  the  means  of  subsistence  in 
intellectual  fields  by  woman,  and  expresses  his 
vast  preference  for  the  uncultured  ballet-girl 
over  all  types  of  cultured  and  productive, 
laboring  womanhood  in  the  universe.  A  sub- 
tle and  profound  instinct  warns  him,  that, 
with  the  increased  intelligence  and  economic 
freedom  of  woman,  he,  and  such  as  he,  might 
ultimately  be  left  sexually  companionless ; 
[254] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

the  undesirable,  the  residuary,  male  old-maids 
of  the  human  race. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  undoubtedly  a 
certain  body  of  females  who  would  lose,  or  im- 
agine they  would  lose,  heavily  by  the  advance 
of  woman  as  a  whole  to  a  condition  of  free 
labor  and  economic  independence.  That  fe- 
male, willfully  or  organically  belonging  to  the 
parasite  class,  having  neither  the  vigor  of  in- 
tellect nor  the  vitality  of  body  to  undertake 
any  form  of  productive  labor,  and  desiring  to 
be  dependent  only  upon  the  passive  perform- 
ance of  sex  function  merely,  would,  whether 
as  prostitute  or  wife,  undoubtedly  lose  heavily 
by  any  social  change  which  demanded  of 
woman  increased  knowledge  and  activity.1 

It  is  exactly  by  these  two  classes  of  persons 
that  the  objection  is  raised  that  the  entrance 
of  woman  into  the  new  fields  of  labor  and  her 
increased  freedom  and  intelligence  will  dislo- 
cate the  relations  of  the  sexes ;  and  while,  from 
the  purely  personal  standpoint,  they  are  un- 
doubtedly right,  viewing  human  society  as  a 

i  She  would  lose  in  two  directions:  by  the  social  disappro- 
bation which,  as  the  new  conditions  became  general,  would  rest 
on  her;  and  yet  more  by  the  competition  of  the  more  devel- 
oped forms.  She  would  practically  become  non-existent. 

[255] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

whole  they  are  fundamentally  wrong.  The 
loss  of  a  small  and  unhealthy  section  will  be  the 
gain  of  human  society  as  a  whole. 

In  the  male  voluptuary  of  feeble  intellect 
and  unattractive  individuality,  who  depends 
for  the  gratification  of  his  sexual  instincts,  not 
on  his  power  of  winning  and  retaining  the  per- 
sonal affection  and  admiration  of  woman,  but 
on  her  purchasable  condition,  either  in  the 
blatantly  barbarous  field  of  sex  traffic  that 
lies  beyond  the  pale  of  legal  marriage,  or  the 
not  less  barbarous  though  more  veiled  traffic 
within  that  pale,  the  entrance  of  woman  into 
the  new  fields  of  labor,  with  an  increased  in- 
tellectual culture  and  economic  freedom,  means 
little  less  than  social  extinction.  But,  to  those 
males  who,  even  at  the  present  day,  constitute 
the  majority  in  our  societies,  and  who  desire 
the  affection  and  fellowship  of  woman  rather 
than  a  mere  material  possession;  for  the  male 
who  has  the  attributes  and  gifts  of  mind  or 
body,  which,  apart  from  any  weight  of  material 
advantage,  would  fit  him  to  hold  the  affection 
of  woman,  however  great  her  freedom  of  choice, 
the  gain  will  be  correspondingly  great.  Given 
[256] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

a  society  in  which  the  majority  of  women 
should  be  so  far  self-supporting,  that,  having 
their  free  share  open  to  them  in  the  modern 
fields  of  labor,  and  reaping  the  full  economic 
rewards  of  their  labor,  marriage  or  some  form 
of  sexual  sale  was  no  more  a  matter  of  neces- 
sity to  them;  so  far  from  this  condition  caus- 
ing a  diminution  in  the  number  of  permanent 
sex  unions,  one  of  the  heaviest  bars  to  them 
would  be  removed.  It  is  universally  allowed 
that  one  of  the  disease  spots  in  our  modern 
social  condition  is  the  increasing  difficulty 
which  bars  conscientious  men  from  entering  on 
marriage  and  rearing  families,  if  limited  means 
would  in  the  case  of  their  death  or  disablement 
throw  the  woman  and  their  common  offspring 
comparatively  helpless  into  the  fierce  stream  of 
our  modern  economic  life.  If  the  woman  could 
justifiably  be  looked  to,  in  case  of  the  man's 
disablement  or  death,  to  take  his  place  as  an 
earner,  thousands  of  valuable  marriages  which 
cannot  now  be  contracted  could  be  entered  on ; 
and  the  serious  social  evil,  which  arises  from 
the  fact  that  while  the  self-indulgent  and  selfish 
freely  marry  and  produce  large  families,  the  re- 
[257] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

strained  and  conscientious  are  often  unable  to 
do  so,  would  be  removed.  For  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  the  modern  world,  prostitu- 
tion, using  that  term  in  its  broadest  sense  to 
cover  all  sexual  relationships  based,  not  on 
the  spontaneous  affection  of  the  woman  for  the 
man,  but  on  the  necessitous  acceptance  by 
woman  of  material  good  in  exchange  for  the 
exercise  of  her  sexual  functions,  would  be  ex- 
tinct; and  the  relation  between  men  and 
women  become  a  co-partnership  between  free- 
men. 

So  far  from  the  economic  freedom  and  social 
independence  of  the  woman  exterminating 
sexual  love  between  man  and  woman,  it  would 
for  the  first  time  fully  enfranchise  it.  The 
element  of  physical  force  and  capture  which 
dominated  the  most  primitive  sex  relations,  the 
more  degrading  element  of  seduction  and  pur- 
chase by  means  of  wealth  or  material  good  of- 
fered to  woman  in  our  modern  societies,  would 
then  give  place  to  the  untrammeled  action  of 
attraction  and  affection  alone  between  the 
sexes,  and  sexual  love,  after  its  long  pilgrimage 
in  the  deserts,  would  be  enabled  to  return  at 
last,  a  king  crowned. 

[258] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

But,  apart  from  the  two  classes  of  persons 
whose  objection  to  the  entrance  of  woman  to 
new  fields  of  labor  is  based  more  or  less  in- 
stinctively on  the  fear  of  personal  loss,  there 
is  undoubtedly  a  small,  very  small,  number  of 
sincere  persons  whose  fear  as  to  severance  be- 
tween the  sexes  to  result  from  woman's  en- 
trance into  the  new  field,  is  based  upon  a  more 
abstract  and  impersonal  ground. 

It  is  not  easy  to  do  full  justice  in  an  exact 
statement  to  views  held  generally  rather  neb- 
ulously and  vaguely,  but  we  believe  we  should 
not  mistake  this  view,  by  saying  that  there 
is  a  certain  class  of  perfectly  sincere  and  even 
moderately  intelligent  folk  who  hold  a  view 
which,  expressed  exactly,  would  come  to  some- 
thing like  this — that  the  entrance  of  woman 
into  new  fields  would  necessitate  so  large  a 
mental  culture  and  such  a  development  of  ac- 
tivity, mental  and  physical,  in  the  woman,  that 
she  might  ultimately  develop  into  a  being  so  su- 
perior to  the  male  or  so  widely  different  from 
the  man,  that  the  bond  of  sympathy  between 
the  sexes  might  ultimately  be  broken  and  the 
man  cease  to  be  an  object  of  affection  and  at- 
traction to  the  woman,  and  the  woman  to  the 
[259] 


WOMAN    AND   LABOR 

man  through  mere  dissimilarity.  The  future 
these  persons  seem  to  see,  more  or  less  vaguely, 
is  of  a  social  condition,  in  which,  the  males  of 
the  race  remaining  precisely  as  they  are,  the 
corresponding  females  shall  have  advanced  to 
undreamed-of  heights  of  culture  and  intelli- 
gence; a  condition  in  which  the  hand-worker 
and  the  ordinary  official  and  small  farmer 
shall  be  confronted  with  the  female  astronomer 
or  Greek  professor  of  astonishing  learning  and 
gifts  as  his  only  possible  complementary  sex 
companion.  The  vision  naturally  awakens 
certain  misgivings  as  to  sympathy  between  and 
suitability  for  each  other,  of  these  two  widely 
dissimilar  parts  of  humanity. 

It  must  of  course  at  once  be  admitted  that, 
were  the  two  sexual  halves  of  humanity  dis- 
tinct species,  which,  having  once  entered  on  a 
course  of  evolution  and  differentiation,  might 
continue  to  develop  along  those  distinct  lines 
for  countless  ages  or  even  for  a  number  of 
generations,  without  reacting  through  inher- 
itance on  each  other,  the  consequences  of  such 
development  might  ultimately  almost  com- 
pletely sever  them. 

The  development  of  distinct  branches  of 
[260] 


CERTAIN   OBJECTIONS 

humanity  has  already  brought  about  such  a 
severance  between  races  and  classes  which  are 
in  totally  distinct  stages  of  evolution.  So 
wide  is  the  hiatus  between  them  often,  that  the 
lowest  form  of  sex  attraction  can  hardly  cross 
it;  and  the  more  highly  developed  mental  and 
emotional  sex  passion  cannot  possibly  bridge 
it.  In  the  world  of  sex,  kind  seeks  kind,  and 
too  wide  a  dissimilarity  completely  bars  the 
existence  of  the  highest  forms  of  sex  emotion, 
and  often  even  the  lower  and  more  purely 
animal. 

Were  it  possible  to  place  a  company  of  the 
most  highly  evolved  human  females — George 
Sands,  Sophia  Kovalevskys,  or  even  the  aver- 
age cultured  females  of  a  highly  evolved  race 
— on  an  island  where  the  only  males  were  sav- 
ages of  the  Fuegan  type,  who  should  meet 
them  on  the  shores  with  matted  hair  and  prog- 
nathous jaws,  and  with  wild  shouts,  brandish- 
ing their  implements  of  death,  to  greet  and 
welcome  them,  it  is  an  undoubted  fact  that, 
so  great  would  be  the  horror  felt  by  the  fe- 
males towards  them,  that  not  only  would  the 
race  become  extinct,  but  if  it  depended  for  its 
continuance  on  any  approach  to  sex  affection 
[261] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

on  the  part  of  the  women,  death  would  cer- 
tainly be  accepted  by  all,  as  the  lesser  of  two 
evils.  Hardly  less  marked  would  be  the  sex- 
ual division  if,  in  place  of  cultured  and  de- 
veloped females,  we  imagine  males  of  the  same 
highly  evolved  class  thrown  into  contact  with 
the  lowest  form  of  primitive  females.  A  Dar- 
win, a  Schiller,  a  Keats,  though  all  men  capa- 
ble of  the  strongest  sex  emotion  and  of  the  most 
durable  sex  affections,  would  probably  be  un- 
touched by  any  emotion  but  horror,  cast  into  the 
company  of  a  circle  of  Bushmen  females  with 
greased  bodies  and  twinkling  eyes,  devouring 
the  raw  entrails  of  slaughtered  beasts. 

But  leaving  out  even  such  extreme  instances 
of  diversity,  the  mere  division  in  culture  and 
mental  habits,  dividing  individuals  of  the  same 
race  but  of  different  classes,  tends  largely  to 
exclude  the  possibility  of  at  least  the  nobler 
and  more  enduring  forms  of  sex  emotion.  The 
highly  cultured  denizen  of  a  modern  society, 
though  he  may  enter  into  passing  and  tem- 
porary and  animal  relations  with  the  uncul- 
tured peasant  or  woman  of  the  street,  seldom 
finds  awakened  within  him  in  such  cases  the 
depth  of  emotion  and  sympathy  which  is  nec- 
[262] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

essary  for  the  closer  tie  of  conjugal  life;  and  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  highest,  most  per- 
manent, and  intimate  forms  of  sexual  affection 
ever  exist  except  among  humans  very  largely 
identical  in  tastes,  habits  of  thought,  and  moral 
and  physical  education.1 

Were  it  possible  that  the  entrance  of  womair- 
into  the  new  fields  of  labor  should  produce 
any  increased  divergence  between  man  and 
woman  in  ideals,  culture,  or  tastes,  there  would 
undoubtedly  be  a  dangerous  responsibility  in- 
curred by  any  who  fostered  such  a  movement. 
But  the  most  superficial  study  of  human  life 
and  the  relation  of  the  sexes  negates  such  a 
conception. 

The  two  sexes  are  not  distinct  species  but 
the  two  halves  of  one  whole,  always  acting  and 
interacting  on  each  other  and  reproducing  each 
other  and  blending  with  each  other  in  each 
generation.  The  human  female  is  bound  or- 
ganically in  two  ways  to  the  males  of  her  so- 
ciety :  collaterally  they  are  her  companions  and 

i  In  Greece  at  a  certain  period  (as  we  have  before  noted) 
there  does  appear  to  have  been  a  temporary  advance  of  the 
male,  so  far  in  advance  of  the  female  as  to  make  the  differ- 
ence between  them  almost  immeasurable;  but  he  quickly  fell 
back  to  the  level  of  the  woman. 

[263] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  co-progenitors  with  her  of  the  race ;  but  she 
is  also  the  mother  of  the  males  of  each  suc- 
ceeding generation,  bearing,  shaping,  and  im- 
pressing her  personality  upon  them.  The 
males  and  females  of  each  human  society  re- 
semble two  oxen  tethered  to  one  yoke:  for  a 
moment  one  may  move  slightly  forward  and 
the  other  remain  stationary ;  but  they  can  never 
move  farther  from  each  other  than  the  length 
of  the  yoke  that  binds  them;  and  they  must 
ultimately  remain  stationary  or  move  forward 
together.  That  which  the  women  of  one  gen- 
eration are  mentally  or  physically,  that  by  in- 
heritance and  education  the  males  of  the  next 
tend  to  be:  there  can  be  no  movement  or  change 
in  one  sex  which  will  not  instantly  have  its  co- 
ordinating effect  upon  the  other;  the  males  of 
to-morrow  are  being  cast  in  the  mold  of  the 
women  of  to-day.  If  new  ideals,  new  moral 
conceptions,  new  methods  of  action  are  found 
permeating  the  minds  of  the  women  of  one 
generation,  they  will  reappear  in  the  ideals, 
moral  conceptions,  methods  of  action  of  the 
men  of  thirty  years  hence;  and  the  idea  that 
the  males  of  a  society  can  ever  become  per- 
manently farther  removed  from  its  females 

[264] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

than  the  individual  man  is  from  the  mother 
who  bore  and  reared  him,  is  at  variance  with 
every  law  of  human  inheritance. 

If,  further,  we  turn  from  an  abstract  con- 
sideration of  this  supposition,  and  examine 
practically  in  the  modern  world  men  and 
women  as  they  exist  to-day,  the  irrationality  of 
the  supposition  is  yet  more  evident. 

Not  merely  is  the  woman's  movement  of  our 
age  not  a  sporadic  and  abnormal  growth,  like 
a  cancer  bearing  no  organic  relation  to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  rest  of  the  social  organism, 
but  it  is  essentially  but  one  important  phase 
of  a  general  modification  which  the  whole  of 
modern  life  is  undergoing.  Further,  careful 
study  of  the  movement  will  show  that,  not  only 
is  it  not  a  movement  on  the  part  of  woman 
leading  to  severance  and  separation  between 
the  woman  and  the  man,  but  that  it  is  essen- 
tially a  movement  of  the  woman  toward  the 
man,  of  the  sexes  towards  closer  union. 

Much  is  said  at  the  present  day  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  "New  Woman'*  (who,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  essentially  but  the  old  non-parasitic 
woman  of  the  remote  past,  preparing  to  draw 
on  her  new  twentieth-century  garb) :  and  it 
[266] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

cannot  truly  be  said  that  her  attitude  finds  a 
lack  of  social  attention.  On  every  hand  she 
is  examined,  praised,  blamed,  mistaken  for  her 
counterfeit,  ridiculed  or  deified — but  nowhere 
can  it  be  said,  that  the  phenomenon  of  her  ex- 
istence is  overlooked. 

But  there  exists  at  the  present  day  another 
body  of  social  phenomena,  quite  as  important, 
as  radical,  and  if  possible  more  far-reaching 
in  its  effects  on  the  present  and  future,  which 
yet  attracts  little  conscious  attention  or  animad- 
version, though  it  makes  itself  everywhere  felt ; 
as  the  shade  of  a  growing  tree  may  be  sat  under 
year  after  year  by  persons  who  never  remark 
its  silent  growth. 

Side  by  side  with  the  "New  Woman,"  cor- 
responding to  her,  as  the  two  sides  of  a  coin 
cast  in  one  mold,  though  differing  from  each 
other  in  superficial  detail,  are  yet  of  one  metal, 
one  size,  and  one  value,  old  in  the  sense  in 
which  she  is  old,  being  merely  the  reincarna- 
tion under  the  pressure  of  new  conditions  of 
the  ancient  forms  of  his  race;  new  in  the  sense 
in  which  she  is  new,  in  that  he  is  an  adaptation 
to  material  and  social  conditions  which  have 
no  exact  counterpart  in  the  past ;  more  diverse 
[266] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

from  his  immediate  progenitors  than  even  the 
woman  is  from  hers,  side  by  side  with  her  to- 
day in  every  society  and  in  every  class  in  which 
she  is  found,  stands — the  New  Man! 

If  he  be  asked,  How  comes  it  to  pass,  if, 
under  the  pressure  of  social  conditions,  man 
shows  an  analogous  change  of  attitude  toward 
life,  that  the  change  in  woman  should  attract 
universal  attention,  while  the  corresponding 
change  in  the  man  of  her  society  passes  almost 
unnoticed? — it  would  seem  that  the  explana- 
tion lies  in  the  fact  that,  owing  to  woman's  less 
independence  of  action  in  the  past,  any  attempt 
at  change  or  readaptation  on  her  part  has  had 
to  overcome  great  resistance,  and  it  is  the  noise 
and  friction  of  resistance,  more  than  the 
amount  of  actual  change  which  has  taken  place, 
which  attracts  attention.  So,  when  an  Alpine 
stream,  after  a  long  winter  frost,  breaks  the 
ice,  and  with  a  crash  and  roar  sweeps  away  the 
obstructions  which  have  gathered  in  its  bed,  all 
men's  attention  is  attracted  to  it,  though  when 
later  a  much  larger  body  of  water  forces  its 
way  down,  no  man  observes  it.  (An  interest- 
ing practical  illustration  of  this  fact  is  found 
in  the  vast  attention  and  uproar  created  when 
[267] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  first  three  women  in  England,  some  twenty 
odd  years  ago,  sought  to  enter  the  medical 
profession.  At  the  present  day  scores  of 
women  prepare  to  enter  it  yearly  without  at- 
tracting any  general  attention;  not  that  the 
change  which  is  going  on  is  not  far  more  in 
volume  and  social  importance,  but  that,  having 
overcome  the  first  obstruction,  it  is  now  noise- 
less.) 

Between  the  Emilias  and  Sophy  Westerns 
of  a  bygone  generation  and  the  most  typical 
of  modern  women,  there  exists  no  greater  gap 
(probably  not  so  great  a  one)  as  that  which 
exists  between  the  Tom  Joneses  and  Squire 
Westerns  of  that  day  and  the  most  typical  of 
entirely  modern  men. 

The  sexual  and  social  ideals  which  dominated 
the  fox-hunting,  hard-drinking,  high-playing, 
recklessly  loose-living  country  squire,  clergy- 
man, lawyer,  and  politician  who  headed  the 
social  organism  of  the  past,  are  at  least  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  ideals  which  dominate  thousands 
of  their  male  descendants  holding  correspond- 
ing positions  in  the  societies  of  to-day,  as  are 
the  ideals  of  her  great-great-grandmother's  re- 

[268] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

mote  from  those  dominating  the  most  modern 
of  New  Women. 

That  which  most  forces  itself  upon  us  as  the 
result  of  a  close  personal  study  of  those  sec- 
tions of  modern  European  societies  in  which 
change  and  adaptation  to  the  new  conditions 
of  life  are  now  most  rapidly  progressing,  is, 
not  merely  that  equally  large  bodies  of  men 
and  women  are  being  rapidly  modified  as  to 
their  sexual  and  social  ideals  and  as  to  their 
mode  of  life,  but  that  this  change  is  strictly 
complementary. 

If  the  ideal  of  the  modern  woman  becomes 
increasingly  one  inconsistent  with  the  passive 
existence  of  woman  on  the  remuneration  which 
her  sexual  attributes  may  win  from  man,  and 
marriage  becomes  for  her  increasingly  a  fellow- 
ship of  comrades,  rather  than  the  relationship 
of  the  owner  and  the  bought,  the  keeper  and 
the  kept;  the  ideal  of  the  typically  modern 
man  departs  quite  as  strongly  from  that  of 
his  forefathers  in  the  direction  of  finding  in 
woman  active  companionship  and  co-operation 
rather  than  passive  submission.  If  the  New 
Woman's  conception  of  parenthood  differs 
[269] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

from  the  old  in  the  greater  sense  of  the  gravity 
and  obligation  resting  on  those  who  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  production  of  the  individual 
life,  making  her  attitude  toward  the  produc- 
tion of  her  race  widely  unlike  the  reckless, 
unreasoning,  maternal  reproduction  of  the 
woman  of  the  past,  the  most  typical  male 
tends  to  feel  in  at  least  the  same  degree  the 
moral  and  social  obligation  entailed  by  awak- 
ening lifehood:  if  the  ideal  which  the  New 
Woman  shapes  for  herself  of  a  male  com- 
panion excludes  the  hard-drinking,  hard- 
swearing,  licentious,  even  if  materially  wealthy 
gallant  of  the  past,  the  most  typically  modern 
male's  ideal  for  himself  excludes  at  least 
equally  this  type. 

The  brothel,  the  race-course,  the  gaming- 
table, and  habits  of  physical  excess  among 
men  are  still  with  us;  but  the  most  superficial 
study  of  our  societies  will  show  that  these 
have  fallen  into  a  new  place  in  the  scale  of 
social  institutions  and  manners.  The  politi- 
cian, the  clergyman,  or  the  lawyer  does  not  im- 
prove his  social  or  public  standing  by  violent 
addictions  in  these  directions ;  to  drink  his  com- 
panions under  the  table,  to  be  known  to  have 
[270] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

the  largest  number  of  illicit  sex  relations,  to 
be  recognized  as  an  habitual  visitant  of  the 
gambling  saloon,  does  not,  even  in  the  case  of 
a  crowned  head,  much  enhance  his  reputation, 
and  may  ultimately  prove  a  bar  to  all  success. 

If  the  New  Woman's  conception  of  love  be- 
tween the  sexes  is  one  more  largely  psychic  and 
intellectual  than  crudely  and  purely  physical, 
and  wholly  of  an  affection  between  equals ;  the 
new  man's  conception,  as  expressed  in  the 
most  typical  literature  and  art,  produced  by 
typically  modern  males,  gives  voice  with  a 
force  no  woman  has  surpassed  to  the  same  new 
ideal.  If  to  the  typical  modern  woman  the 
lifelong  companionship  of  a  Tom  Jones  or 
Squire  Western  would  be  more  intolerable  than 
death  or  the  most  complete  celibacy,  not  less 
would  the  most  typical  of  modern  men  shrink 
from  the  prospect  of  a  lifelong  fetterment  to 
the  companionship  of  an  always  fainting  and 
weeping  Emilia  or  a  Sophia  of  a  bygone  epoch. 

If  anywhere  on  earth  exists  the  perfect  ideal 
of  that  which  the  modern  woman  desires  to 
be — of  a  laboring  and  virile  womanhood,  free, 
strong,  fearless  and  tender — it  will  probably 
be  found  imaged  deeply  in  the  heart  of  the 
[271] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

New  Man;  engendered  there  by  his  own  high- 
est needs  and  aspirations;  and  nowhere  would 
the  most  highly  developed  modern  male  find 
a  clearer  image  of  that  which  forms  his  ideal 
of  the  most  fully  developed  manhood,  than  in 
the  ideal  of  man  which  haunts  the  heart  of  the 
New  Woman. 

Those  have  strangely  overlooked  some  of  the 
most  important  phenomena  of  our  modern 
world,  who  see  in  the  woman's  movement  of 
our  day  a  movement  of  the  female  against  the 
male,  of  the  woman  away  from  the  man. 

We  have  called  the  woman's  movement  of 
our  age  an  endeavor  on  the  part  of  women 
among  modern  civilized  races  to  find  new  fields 
of  labor  as  the  old  slip  from  them,  as  an  at- 
tempt to  escape  from  parasitism  and  an  inac- 
tive dependence  upon  sex  function  alone ;  but, 
viewed  from  another  side,  the  woman's  move- 
ment might  not  less  justly  be  called  a  part  of 
a  great  movement  of  the  sexes  towards  each 
other,  a  movement  towards  common  occupa- 
tions, common  interests,  common  ideals,  and  an 
emotional  tenderness  and  sympathy  between 
the  sexes  more  deeply  founded  and  more  inde- 
structible than  any  the  world  has  yet  seen. 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

It  may  be  suggested,  and  the  perception  of 
a  certain  profound  truth  underlies  this  sug- 
gestion :  How  is  it,  if  there  be  this  close  reci- 
procity between  the  lines  along  which  the  ad- 
vanced and  typical  modern  males  and  females 
are  developing,  that  there  does  exist  in  our 
modern  societies,  and  often  among  the  very 
classes  forming  our  typically  advanced  sec- 
tions, so  much  of  pain,  unrest,  and  sexual  disco- 
ordination  at  the  present  day? 

The  reply  to  this  pertinent  suggestion  is, 
that  the  disco-ordination,  struggle,  and  con- 
sequent suffering  which  undoubtedly  do  exist 
when  we  regard  the  world  of  sexual  relation- 
ships and  ideals  in  our  modern  societies,  do 
not  arise  in  any  way  from  a  disco-ordination 
between  the  sexes  as  such,  but  from  the  con- 
flict between  old  ideals  and  new;  a  struggle 
which  is  going  on  in  every  branch  of  human 
life  in  our  modern  societies,  and  in  which  the 
determining  element  is  not  sex,  but  the  point 
of  evolution  which  the  individual  has  reached. 

It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  even  at  the 
risk  of  the  most  wearisome  reiteration,  that  our 
societies  are  societies  in  a  state  of  rapid  evo- 
lution and  change.  The  continually  changing 
[273] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

material  conditions  of  life,  with  their  reaction 
on  the  intellectual,  emotional,  and  moral  aspect 
of  human  affairs,  render  our  societies  the  most 
complex  and  probably  the  most  mobile  and  un- 
settled which  the  world  has  ever  seen.  As  the 
result  of  this  rapidity  of  change  and  complex- 
ity, there  must  exist  a  large  amount  of  disco- 
ordination,  and,  consequently,  of  suffering. 

In  a  stationary  society  where  generation  has 
succeeded  generation  for  hundreds,  or  it  may 
be  for  thousands,  of  years,  with  little  or  no 
change  in  the  material  conditions  of  life,  the 
desires,  institutions,  and  moral  principles  of 
men,  their  religious,  political,  domestic,  and 
sexual  institutions,  have  gradually  shaped 
themselves  in  accordance  with  these  conditions ; 
and  a  certain  harmony,  and  homogeneity,  and 
tranquillity,  pervades  the  society. 

In  societies  in  the  rapid  state  of  change  in 
which  our  modern  societies  find  themselves, 
where  not  merely  each  decade,  but  each  year, 
and  almost  day,  brings  new  forces  and  condi- 
tions to  bear  on  life,  not  only  is  the  amount 
of  suffering  and  social  rupture,  which  all 
rapid,  excessive,  and  sudden  change  entails 
on  an  organism,  inevitable;  but,  the  new  con- 
[274] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

ditions,  acting  at  different  angles  of  inten- 
sity on  the  different  individuals  composing  the 
society,  according  to  their  positions  and  vary- 
ing intelligence,  and  producing  a  society  of 
such  marvelous  complexity  and  dissimilarity  in 
the  different  parts,  the  intensest  rupture  and 
disco-ordination  between  individuals  is  inevita- 
ble; and  sexual  ideals  and  relationships  must 
share  in  the  universal  condition. 

In  a  primitive  society  (if  a  somewhat  prolix 
illustration  may  be  allowed)  where  for  count- 
less generations  the  conditions  of  life  had  re- 
mained absolutely  unchanged;  where  for  ages 
it  had  been  necessary  that  all  males  should  em- 
ploy themselves  in  subduing  wild  beasts  and 
meeting  dangerous  foes,  polygamy  might  uni- 
versally have  been  a  necessity,  if  the  race  was  to 
exist  and  its  numbers  be  kept  up,  and,  society 
recognizing  this,  polygamy  would  be  an  insti- 
tution universally  approved  and  submitted  to, 
however  much  suffering  it  entailed.  If  food 
were  scarce,  the  destruction  of  superfluous  in- 
fants and  of  the  aged  might  also  always  have 
been  necessary  for  the  good  of  the  individuals 
themselves  as  well  as  of  society,  and  the  whole 
society  would  acquiesce  in  it  without  any  moral 
[275] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

doubt.  If  an  eclipse  of  the  sun  had  once  oc- 
curred in  connection  with  the  appearance  of  a 
certain  insect,  they  might  universally  regard 
that  insect  as  a  god  causing  it ;  and  ages  might 
pass  without  anything  arising  to  disprove  their 
belief.  There  would  be  no  social  or  religious 
problem;  and  the  view  of  one  man  would  be 
the  view  of  all  men;  and  all  would  be  more  or 
less  in  harmony  with  the  established  institution 
and  customs. 

But,  supposing  the  sudden  arrival  of  stran- 
gers armed  with  superior  weapons  and  knowl- 
edge, who  should  exterminate  all  wild  beasts 
and  render  war  and  the  consequent  loss  of 
male  life  a  thing  of  the  past;  not  only  would 
the  male  be  driven  to  encroach  on  the  female's 
domain  of  domestic  agriculture  and  labor  gen- 
erally, but  the  males,  not  being  so  largely 
destroyed,  would  soon  equal  and  surpass  in 
numbers  the  females;  and  not  only  would  it 
then  become  a  moot  matter,  "a  problem/' 
which  labors  were  or  were  not  to  be  performed 
by  man  and  which  by  woman,  but  very  soon, 
not  the  woman  alone  nor  the  man  alone,  but 
both,  would  be  driven  to  speculate  as  to  the 
desirability  or  necessity  of  polygamy,  which, 

[276] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

were  men  as  numerous  as  women,  would  leave 
many  males  without  sex  companions.  The 
more  intelligent  and  progressive  individuals  in 
the  community  would  almost  at  once  arrive  at 
the  conclusion  that  polygamy  was  objection- 
able; the  most  fearless  would  seek  to  carry 
their  theory  into  action ;  the  most  ignorant  and 
unprogressive  would  determinately  stick  to  the 
old  institutions  as  inherited  from  the  past, 
without  reason  or  question.  Differences  of 
ideal  would  cause  conflict  and  dissension  in  all 
parts  of  the  body  social,  and  suffering  would 
ensue,  where  all  before  was  fixed  and  deter- 
minate. So  also  if  the  strangers  introduced 
new  and  improved  methods  of  agriculture,  and 
food  became  abundant,  it  would  then  at  once 
strike  the  most  far-seeing  and  readily  adapta- 
ble members  of  the  community,  both  male  and 
female,  that  there  was  no  necessity  for  the  de- 
struction of  their  offspring.  Old  men  and 
women  would  begin  seriously  to  object  to  be- 
ing hastened  to  death  when  they  realized  that 
starvation  did  not  necessarily  stare  them  in 
the  face  if  they  survived  to  an  extreme  old 
age.  The  most  stupid  and  hide-bound  mem- 
bers of  the  community  would  still  continue  to 
[277] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

sacrifice  parents  and  offspring  long  after  the 
necessity  had  ceased,  under  the  influence  of 
traditional  bias;  many  persons  would  be  in  a 
state  of  much  moral  doubt  as  to  which  course 
of  action  to  pursue,  the  old  or  the  new;  and 
bitter  conflict  might  rage  in  the  community 
on  all  these  points.  Were  the  strangers  to 
bring  with  them  telescopes,  looking  through 
which  it  might  at  once  clearly  be  seen  that  an 
eclipse  of  the  sun  was  caused  merely  by  the 
moon's  passing  over  its  face,  the  more  intel- 
ligent members  of  the  community  would  at 
once  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  insect  was 
not  the  cause  of  eclipses,  would  cease  to  re- 
gard it  as  a  god,  and  might  even  kill  it.  The 
more  stupid  and  immobile  section  of  the  com- 
munity might  refuse  to  look  through  the 
telescope,  or  looking  might  refuse  to  see  that 
it  was  the  moon  which  caused  the  eclipse,  and 
their  deep-seated  reverence  for  the  insect, 
which  was  the  growth  of  ages,  would  lead 
them  to  regard  as  impious  those  individuals 
who  denied  its  godhead,  and  might  even  lead 
to  the  physical  destruction  of  the  first  unbe- 
lievers. The  society,  once  so  homogeneous 
and  co-ordinated  in  all  its  parts,  would  become 
[278] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

at  once  a  society  rent  by  moral  and  social 
problems;  and  endless  suffering  must  come  to 
individuals  in  the  attempt  to  co-ordinate  the 
ideals,  manners,  and  institutions  of  the  society 
to  the  new  conditions!  There  might  be  im- 
mense gain  in  many  directions ;  lives  otherwise 
sacrificed  would  be  spared,  a  higher  and  more 
satisfactory  stage  of  existence  might  be  en- 
tered on;  but  the  disco-ordination  and  strug- 
gle would  be  inevitable  until  the  society  had 
established  an  equilibrium  between  its  knowl- 
edge, its  material  conditions,  and  its  social, 
sexual,  and  religious  ideals  and  institutions. 

An  analogous  condition,  but  of  a  far  more 
complex  kind,  exists  at  the  present  day  in  our 
own  societies.  Our  material  environment 
differs  in  every  respect  from  that  of  our  grand- 
parents, and  bears  little  or  no  resemblance  to 
that  of  a  few  centuries  ago.  Here  and  there, 
even  in  our  civilized  societies  in  remote  agri- 
cultural districts,  the  old  social  conditions  may 
remain  undisturbed ;  but  throughout  the  bulk  of 
our  societies  the  substitution  of  mechanical 
for  hand-labor,  the  wide  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge through  the  always  increasing  cheap 
printing-press,  the  rapidly  increasing  gather- 
[279] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

ing  of  human  creatures  into  vast  cities,  where 
not  merely  thousands  but  millions  of  indi- 
viduals are  gathered  together  under  physical 
and  mental  conditions  of  life  which  invert  every 
social  condition  of  the  past;  the  increasingly 
rapid  means  of  locomotion;  the  increasing  in- 
tercourse between  races  and  lands,  brought 
about  by  rapid  means  of  intercommunication, 
widening  and  changing  in  every  direction  the 
human  horizon — all  these  produce  a  society, 
so  complex  and  so  rapidly  altering  that  social 
co-ordination  between  all  its  parts  is  impos- 
sible; and  social  unrest,  and  the  strife  of  ideals, 
of  faiths,  of  institutions,  and  consequent  hu- 
man suffering,  is  inevitable. 

If  the  ancient  guns  and  agricultural  im- 
plements which  our  fathers  taught  us  to  use 
are  valueless  in  the  hands  of  their  descendants, 
if  the  samplers  our  mothers  worked  and  the 
stockings  they  knitted  are  become  superfluous 
through  the  action  of  the  modern  loom,  yet 
more  are  their  social  institutions,  faiths,  and 
manners  of  life  become  daily  and  increasingly 
unfitted  to  our  use ;  and  friction  and  suffering 
inevitable,  especially  for  the  most  advanced 
and  modified  individuals  in  our  societies.  This 
[280] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

suffering,  if  we  analyze  it  closely,  rises  from 
three  causes: 

Firstly,  it  is  caused  by  the  fact  that  mere 
excessive  rapidity  of  change  tends  always 
easily  to  become  painful,  by  rupturing  vio- 
lently already  formed  habits  and  modes  of 
thought,  as  a  very  rapidly  growing  tree  rup- 
tures its  bark  and  exudes  its  internal  juices. 

Secondly,  it  arises  from  the  fact  that  indi- 
viduals of  the  same  human  society,  not  adapt- 
ing themselves  at  the  same  rate  to  the  new 
conditions,  or  being  exposed  to  them  in  differ- 
ent degrees,  a  wide  and  almost  unparalleled 
dissimilarity  has  to-day  arisen  between  the 
different  individuals  composing  our  societies. 
Side  by  side  with  men  and  women  who  have 
so  rapidly  adapted  or  are  so  successfully  seek- 
ing to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  conditions 
of  knowledge  and  new  conditions  of  life, 
that,  were  they  to  reappear  in  future  ages  in 
more  co-ordinated  societies,  they  might  hardly 
appear  wholly  antiquated,  are  to  be  found 
men  and  women  whose  social,  religious,  and 
moral  ideals  would  not  constitute  them  out 
of  harmony  if  they  returned  to  the  primitive 
camps  of  the  remote  forbears  of  the  human 
[281] 


WOMAN    AND   LABOR 

race;  while,  between  these  extreme  classes, 
lies  that  large  mass  of  persons  in  an  inter- 
mediate state  of  development.  This  diversity 
is  bound  to  cause  friction  and  suffering  in 
the  interactions  of  the  members  of  our  so- 
cieties ;  more  especially  as  the  individuals  com- 
posing each  type  are  not  sorted  out  into 
classes  and  families,  but  are  found  scattered 
through  all  classes  and  grades  in  our  societies.1 
Persons  bound  by  the  closest  ties  of  blood  or 
social  contiguity  and  compelled  to  a  continual 
intercourse  are  often  those  most  widely  dis- 
severed in  their  amount  of  adaptation  to  the 
new  conditions  of  life.  The  amount  of  social 
friction  and  consequent  human  suffering  aris- 
ing from  this  fact  is  so  subtle  and  almost  in- 
calculable, that  perhaps  it  is  impossible  ade- 
quately to  portray  it  in  dry  didactic  language. 
It  is  perhaps  only  describable  in  the  medium 
of  art,  where  actual  concrete  individuals  are 
shown  acting  and  reacting  on  each  other — as 
in  the  novel  or  the  drama.  We  are  like  a 

i  One  of  the  women  holding  the  most  advanced  and  modern 
view  of  the  relation  of  woman  to  life  whom  we  have  met  was 
the  wife  of  a  Northamptonshire  shoemaker;  herself  engaged 
in  making  her  living  by  the  sewing  of  the  uppers  of  men's 
boots. 

[282] 


CERTAIN   OBJECTIONS 

company  of  chess-men,  not  sorted  out  in  kinds, 
pawns  together,  kings  and  queens  together, 
and  knights  and  rooks  together,  but  simply 
thrown  at  haphazard  into  a  box,  and  jumbled 
side  by  side.  In  the  stationary  societies, 
where  all  individuals  were  permeated  by  the 
same  political,  religious,  moral,  and  social 
ideas;  and  where  each  class  had  its  own 
hereditary  and  fixed  traditions  of  action  and 
manners,  this  cause  of  friction  and  suffering 
had  of  necessity  no  existence ;  individual  differ- 
ences and  discord  might  be  occasioned  by  per- 
sonal greeds,  ambitions,  and  selfishnesses,  but 
not  by  conflicting  conceptions  of  right  and 
wrong,  of  the  desirable  and  undesirable,  in  all 
branches  of  human  life.1 

Thirdly,  the  unrest  and  suffering  peculiar  to 

i  Only  those  who  have  been  thrown  into  contact  with  a  sta- 
tionary and  homogeneous  society  such  as  that  of  primitive 
African  tribes  before  coming  in  contact  with  Europeans;  or 
such  as  the  up-country  Boers  of  South  Africa  were  twenty 
years  ago,  can  realize  adequately  how  wholly  free  from  moral 
and  social  problems  and  social  friction  such  a  society  can  be. 
It  is  in  studying  such  societies  that  the  truth  is  vividly  forced 
on  one,  that  the  key  to  half,  and  more  than  half,  of  the  phe- 
nomena in  our  own  social  condition,  can  be  found  only  in  our 
rapidly  changing  conditions  necessitating  equally  rapid  change 
In  our  conceptions,  ideals,  and  institutions. 

[283] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

our  age  is  caused  by  conflict  going  on  within 
the  individual  himself.  So  intensely  rapid  is 
the  change  which  is  taking  place  in  our  envi- 
ronment and  knowledge  that  in  the  course  of  a 
single  life  a  man  may  pass  through  half  a 
dozen  phases  of  growth.  Born  and  reared  in 
possession  of  certain  ideas  and  manners  of  ac- 
tion, he  or  she  may,  before  middle  life  is 
reached,  have  had  occasion  repeatedly  to  mod- 
ify, enlarge,  and  alter,  or  completely  throw 
aside  those  traditions.  Within  the  individ- 
uality itself  of  such  persons  goes  on,  in  an 
intensified  form,  that  very  struggle,  conflict, 
and  disco-ordination  which  is  going  on  in  so- 
ciety at  large  between  its  different  members 
and  sections;  and  agonizing  moments  must 
arise,  when  the  individual,  seeing  the  neces- 
sity for  adopting  new  courses  of  action,  or 
for  accepting  new  truths,  or  conforming  to 
new  conditions,  will  yet  be  tortured  by  the  hold 
of  traditional  convictions;  and  the  men  or 
women  who  attempt  to  adapt  their  life  to  the 
new  material  conditions  and  to  harmony  with 
new  knowledge  are  almost  bound  at  some  time 
to  rupture  the  continuity  of  their  own  psy- 
chological existence. 

[284] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

It  is  these  conditions  which  give  rise  to  the 
fact  so  often  noticed,  that  the  art  of  our  age 
tends  persistently  to  deal  with  subtle  psycho- 
logical problems,  religious,  political,  and  sex- 
ual, to  which  the  art  of  the  past  holds  no  par- 
allel; and  it  is  so  inevitably,  because  the  artist 
who  would  obey  the  artistic  instinct  to  portray 
faithfully  the  world  about  him,  must  portray 
that  which  lies  at  the  core  of  its  life.  The 
"problem"  play,  novel,  and  poem  are  as  in- 
evitable in  this  age,  as  it  was  that  the  artist  of 
the  eleventh  century  should  portray  tourna- 
ments, physical  battles,  and  chivalry,  because 
they  were  the  dominant  element  in  the  life 
about  him. 

It  is  also  inevitable  that  this  suffering  and 
conflict  must  make  itself  felt  in  its  acutest 
form  in  the  person  of  the  most  advanced  in- 
dividual of  our  societies.  It  is  the  swimmer 
who  first  leaps  into  the  frozen  stream  who  is 
cut  sharpest  by  the  ice;  those  who  follow  him 
find  it  broken,  and  the  last  find  it  gone.  It 
is  the  men  or  women  who  first  tread  down 
the  path  which  the  bulk  of  humanity  will  ul- 
timately follow,  who  must  find  themselves  at 
last  in  solitudes  where  the  silence  is  deadly. 
[285] 


The  fact  that  any  course  of  human  action  lead- 
ing to  adjustment  leads  also  to  immediate 
suffering  is  no  argument  against  it;  that  suf- 
fering is  the  crown  of  thorns  which  marks  the 
kingship  of  earth's  Messiahs :  it  is  the  mark  of 
the  leader. 

Thus  social  disco-ordination,  and  subjective 
conflict  and  suffering,  pervade  the  life  of  our 
age,  making  themselves  felt  in  every  division 
of  human  life,  religious,  political,  and  domes- 
tic. 

*** 

If  they  are  more  noticeable,  and  make 
themselves  more  keenly  felt  in  the  region  of 
sex  than  in  any  other,  even  the  religious,  it  is 
because  when  we  enter  the  region  of  sex  we 
touch,  as  it  were,  the  spinal  cord  of  the  human 
existence,  its  great  nerve  center,  where  sensa- 
tion is  most  acute,  and  pain  and  pleasure  most 
keenly  felt.  It  is  not  sex  disco-ordination 
that  is  at  the  root  of  our  social  unrest;  it  is  the 
universal  disco-ordination  which  affects  even 
the  world  of  sex  phenomena. 

Also  it  is  necessary  to  note  that  the  line 
which  divides  the  progressive  sections  of  our 
communities,  seeking  to  co-ordinate  themselves 
to  the  new  conditions  of  life,  from  the  retro- 
[286] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

gressive  is  not  a  line  running  coincidentally 
with  that  of  sex.  A  George  Sand  and  a 
Henrick  Ibsen  belong  more  essentially  to  the 
same  class  in  the  order  of  modern  development, 
than  either  belongs  to  any  class  composed  en- 
tirely of  their  own  sex.  If  we  divide  humanity 
into  classes  according  to  type,  in  each  division 
will  be  found  the  male  with  his  complementary 
female.  Side  by  side  with  the  old  harlot  at 
the  street  corner  anxious  to  sell  herself,  stands 
the  old  aboriginal  male,  whether  covered  or 
not  with  a  veneer  of  civilization,  eager  and  de- 
siring to  buy.  Side  by  side  with  the  parasitic 
woman,  seeking  only  increased  pleasure  and 
luxury  from  her  relations  with  man,  stands 
the  male  seeking  only  pleasure  and  self-in- 
dulgence from  his  relations  with  her.  Side  by 
side  with  the  New  Woman,  anxious  for  labor 
and  seeking  from  man  only  such  love  and  fel- 
lowship as  she  gives,  stands  the  New  Man, 
anxious  to  possess  her  only  on  the  terms  she 
offers.  If  the  social  movement,  through 
which  the  most  advanced  women  of  eur  day 
are  attempting  to  bring  themselves  into  co- 
ordination with  the  new  conditions  of  life, 
removes  them  immeasurably  from  certain 
[287] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

types  of  the  primitive  male;  the  same  move- 
ment equally  removes  the  new  male  from  the 
old  female.  The  sexual  tragedy  of  modern 
life  lies,  not  in  the  fact  that  woman  as  such  is 
tending  to  differ  fundamentally  from  man  as 
such;  but  that,  in  the  unassorted  confusion  of 
our  modern  life,  it  is  continually  the  modified 
type  of  man  or  woman  who  is  thrown  into  the 
closest  personal  relations  with  the  antiquated 
type  of  the  opposite  sex;  that  between  father 
and  daughter,  mother  and  son,  brother  and  sis- 
ter, husband  and  wife,  may  sometimes  be  found 
to  intervene  not  merely  years,  but  even  cen- 
turies of  social  evolution. 

It  is  not  man  as  man  who  opposes  the  at- 
tempt of  woman  to  readjust  herself  to  the 
new  conditions  of  life:  that  opposition  arises, 
perhaps  more  often,  from  the  retrogressive 
members  of  her  own  sex.  And  it  is  a  fact 
which  will  surprise  no  one  who  has  studied 
the  conditions  of  modern  life,  that  among  the 
works  of  literature  in  all  European  languages 
which  most  powerfully  advocate  the  entrance 
of  woman  into  the  new  fields  of  labor,  which 
most  uncompromisingly  demand  for  her  the 
widest  training  and  freedom  of  action,  and 
[288] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

which  most  passionately  seek  for  the  breaking 
down  of  all  artificial  lines  which  sever  the 
woman  from  the  man,  many  of  the  ablest  and 
most  uncompromising  are  the  works  of  men. 

The  New  Man  and  Woman  do  not  resemble 
two  people,  who,  standing  on  a  level  plain,  set 
out  on  two  roads,  which,  diverging  at  differ- 
ent angles  and  continued  in  straight  lines, 
must  continue  to  take  them  farther  and  farther 
from  each  other  the  longer  they  proceed  in 
them;  rather,  they  resemble  two  persons  who 
start  to  climb  a  spur  of  the  same  mountain 
from  opposite  sides;  where,  the  higher  they 
climb,  the  nearer  they  come  to  each  other,  be- 
ing bound  ultimately  to  meet  at  the  top. 

Even  that  opposition  often  made  by  males 
to  the  entrance  of  woman  into  the  new  fields 
of  labor,  of  which  they  at  present  hold  the 
monopoly,  is  not  fundamentally  sexual  in  its 
nature.  The  male  who  opposes  the  entrance 
of  woman  into  the  trade  or  profession  in  which 
he  holds  more  or  less  a  monopoly,  would  op- 
pose with  equal,  and  perhaps  even  greater 
bitterness,  the  opening  of  its  doors  to  num- 
bers of  his  own  sex  who  had  before  been  ex- 
cluded, and  who  would  limit  his  gains  and 
[289] 


share  his  privileges.  It  is  the  primitive  brute 
instinct  to  retain  as  much  as  possible  for  the 
ego,  irrespective  of  justice  or  humanity,  which 
dominates  all  the  lower  moral  types  of  human- 
ity, both  male  and  female,  which  acts  here. 
The  lawyer  or  physician  who  objects  to  the 
entrance  of  women  to  his  highly  fenced  pro- 
fessional enclosure,  would  probably  object 
yet  more  strenuously  if  it  were  proposed  to 
throw  down  the  barriers  of  restraint  and 
monetary  charges  which  would  result  in  the 
flooding  of  his  profession  by  other  males :  while 
the  mechanic,  who  resists  the  entrance  of 
woman  into  his  especial  field,  is  invariably 
found  even  more  persistently  to  oppose  any 
attempt  at  entrance  on  the  part  of  other  males, 
when  he  finds  it  possible  to  do  so. 

This  opposition  of  the  smaller  type  of  male, 
to  the  entrance  of  woman  into  the  callings 
hitherto  apportioned  to  himself,  is  sometimes 
taken  as  implying  the  impossibility  of  fellow- 
ship and  affection  existing  between  the  men 
and  women  employed  in  common  labor;  it 
is  said  sometimes  that  the  professional  jeal- 
ousy of  the  man  must  necessitate  his  feel- 
ing a  hatred  and  antagonism  towards  the 
[290] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

woman  who  shares  his  fields  of  labor.  But  the 
most  superficial  study  of  human  life  negates 
such  a  supposition.  Among  men,  in  spite  of 
the  occasional  existence  of  the  petty  profes- 
sional jealousies  and  antagonism,  we  find, 
viewing  society  as  a  whole,  that  common  in- 
terests, and  above  all  common  labors,  are  the 
most  potent  means  of  bringing  them  into  close 
and  friendly  relations,  and,  in  fact,  they  seem 
generally  essential  for  the  formation  of  the 
closest  and  most  permanent  human  friend- 
ships. In  every  walk  of  human  life,  whether 
trade  or  profession,  we  find  men  associating 
by  choice  mainly  with,  and  entertaining  often 
the  profoundest  and  most  permanent  friend- 
ship for,  men  engaged  in  their  own  callings. 
The  inner  circle  of  a  barrister's  friendships 
almost  always  consists  of  his  fellow-barristers ; 
the  broker,  who  is  free  to  select  his  society 
where  he  will,  will  be  oftenest  found  in  com- 
pany with  his  fellow-man-of -business ;  the 
medical  man's  closest  friendship  is,  in  a  large 
number  of  cases,  for  some  man  who  was  once 
his  fellow-student  and  has  passed  through  the 
different  stages  of  his  professional  life  with 
him;  the  friends  and  chosen  companions  of 
[291] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  actor  are  commonly  actors;  of  the  savant, 
savants;  of  the  farmer,  farmers;  of  the  sailor, 
sailors.  So  generally  is  this  the  case  that  it 
would  almost  attract  attention  and  cause 
amusement  were  the  boon  companion  of  the 
sea  captain  a  leading  politician,  and  the  in- 
timate friend  of  the  clergyman  an  actor,  or 
the  dearest  friend  of  the  farmer  an  astronomer. 
Kind  seeks  kind.  The  majority  of  men  by 
choice  frequent  clubs  where  those  of  their  own 
calling  are  found,  and  especially  as  life  ad- 
vances and  men  sink  deeper  into  their  pro- 
fessional grooves,  they  are  found  to  seek 
fellowship  mainly  among  their  fellow-workers. 
That  this  should  be  so  is  inevitable;  common 
amusements  may  create  a  certain  bond  be- 
tween the  young,  but  the  performance  of  com- 
mon labors,  necessitating  identical  knowledge, 
identical  habits,  and  modes  of  thought,  forms 
a  far  stronger  bond,  drawing  men  far  more 
powerfully  towards  social  intercourse  and  per- 
sonal friendship,  than  the  centrifugal  force  of 
professional  jealousies  can  divide  them. 

That  the  same  condition  would  prevail 
where  women  became  fellow-workers  with  men 
might  be  inferred  on  abstract  grounds:  but 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

practical  experience  confirms  this.  The  actor 
of tenest  marries  the  actress ;  the  male  musician 
the  female;  the  reception-room  of  the  literary 
woman  or  female  painter  is  found  continually 
frequented  by  men  of  her  own  calling;  the 
woman-doctor  associates  continually  with  and 
often  marries  one  of  her  own  confreres;  and 
as  women  in  increasing  numbers  share  the 
modern  fields  of  labor  with  men,  which  have 
hitherto  been  apportioned  to  them  alone,  the 
nature  and  strength  of  the  sympathy  arising 
from  common  labors  will  be  increasingly  clear. 
The  sharing  by  men  and  women  of  common 
labors,  necessitating  a  common  culture  and 
therefore  common  habits  of  thought  and  in- 
terests, would  tend  to  fill  that  painful  hiatus 
which  arises  so  continually  in  modern  con- 
jugal life,  dividing  the  man  and  woman  as 
soon  as  the  first  sheen  of  physical  sexual  at- 
traction which  glints  only  over  the  unknown 
begins  to  fade,  and  from  which  springs  so 
large  a  part  of  the  tragedy  of  modern  con- 
jugal relations.  The  primitive  male  might 
discuss  with  her  his  success  in  hunting  and 
her  success  in  finding  roots;  as  the  primi- 
tive peasant  may  discuss  to-day  with  his  wife 
[293] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

the  crops  and  cows  in  which  both  are  equally 
interested  and  which  both  understand;  there  is 
nothing  in  their  order  of  life  to  produce  al- 
ways increasingly  divergent  habits  of  thought 
and  interest. 

In  modern  civilized  life,  in  many  sections, 
the  lack  of  any  common  labor  and  interests 
and  the  wide  dissimilarity  of  the  life  led  by  the 
man  and  the  woman,  tend  continually  to  pro- 
duce increasing  divergence,  so  that,  long  be- 
fore middle  life  is  reached,  they  are  left  with- 
out any  bond  of  cohesion  but  that  of  habit. 
The  comradeship  and  continual  stimulation, 
rising  from  intercourse  with  those  sharing  our 
closest  interests  and  regarding  life  from  the 
same  standpoint,  the  man  tends  to  seek  in  his 
club  and  among  his  male  companions,  and 
the  woman  accepts  solitude,  or  seeks  dissipa- 
tions which  tend  yet  further  to  disrupt  the 
common  conjugal  life.  A  certain  mental 
camaraderie  and  community  of  impersonal 
interests  is  imperative  in  conjugal  life  in  ad- 
dition to  a  purely  sexual  relation,  if  the  union 
is  to  remain  a  living  and  growing  reality. 
It  is  more  especially  because  the  sharing  by 
woman  of  the  labors  of  man  will  tend  to 
[29*] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

promote  camaraderie  and  the  existence  of 
common,  impersonal  interests  and  like  habits 
of  thought  and  life,  that  the  entrance  of 
women  into  the  fields  shared  by  men,  and  not 
into  others  peculiarly  reserved  for  her,  is  so 
desirable.1 

i  The  reply  given  once  by  the  wife  of  a  leading  barrister, 
when  reference  was  made  to  the  fact  that  she  and  her  husband 
were  seldom  found  in  each  other's  society,  throws  a  painful  but 
true  light  on  certain  aspects  of  modern  life,  against  which  the 
entire  woman's  movement  of  our  age  is  a  rebellion.  "My  hus- 
band," she  said,  "is  always  increasingly  absorbed  in  his  legal 
duties,  of  which  I  understand  nothing,  and  which  so  do  not  in- 
terest me.  My  children  are  all  growing  up  and  at  school.  I 
have  servants  enough  to  attend  to  my  house.  When  he  comes 
home  in  the  evening,  if  I  try  to  amuse  him  by  telling  him  of 
the  things  I  have  been  doing  during  the  day,  of  the  bazaars 
I  am  working  for,  the  shopping  I  have  done,  the  visits  I  have 
paid,  he  is  bored.  He  is  anxious  to  get  away  to  his  study, 
his  books,  and  his  men  friends,  and  I  am  left  utterly  alone. 
If  it  were  not  for  the  society  of  women  and  other  men  with 
whom  I  have  more  in  common,  I  could  not  bear  my  life. 
When  we  first  met  as  boy  and  girl,  and  fell  in  love,  we  danced 
and  rode  together  and  seemed  to  have  everything  in  common; 
now  we  have  nothing.  I  respect  him  and  I  believe  he  respects 
me,  but  that  is  all!"  It  is,  perhaps,  only  in  close  confidences 
between  man  and  man  and  woman  and  woman  that  this  open 
sore,  rising  from  the  divergence  in  training,  habits  of  life,  and 
occupation  between  men  and  women  is  spoken  of;  but  it  lies 
as  a  tragic  element  at  the  core  of  millions  of  modern  conjugal 
relations,  beneath  the  smooth  superficial  surface  of  our  modern 
life;  breaking  out  to  the  surface  only  occasionally  in  the  revela- 
tions of  our  divorce  courts. 

[295] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

It  is  a  gracious  fact,  to  which  every  woman 
who  has  achieved  success  or  accomplished  good 
work  in  any  of  the  fields  generally  appor- 
tioned to  men  will  bear  witness,  whether  that 
work  be  in  the  field  of  literature,  of  science, 
or  the  organized  professions,  that  the  hands 
which  have  been  most  eagerly  stretched  out  to 
welcome  her  have  been  those  of  men;  that  the 
voices  which  have  most  generously  acclaimed 
her  success  have  been  those  of  male  fellow- 
workers  in  the  fields  into  which  she  has  en- 
tered. 

There  is  no  door  at  which  the  hand  of 
woman  has  knocked  for  admission  into  a  new 
field  of  toil  but  there  have  been  found  on  the 
other  side  the  hands  of  strong  and  generous 
men  eager  to  turn  it  for  her  almost  before  she 
knocks. 

To  those  of  us  who,  at  the  beginning  of  a 
new  century,  stand  with  shaded  eyes,  gazing 
into  the  future,  striving  to  descry  the  outlines 
of  the  shadowy  figures  which  loom  before  us 
in  the  distance,  nothing  seems  of  so  gracious 
a  promise  as  the  outline  we  seem  to  discern 
of  a  condition  of  human  life  in  which  a  closer 
[296] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

union  than  the  world  has  yet  seen  shall  exist 
between  the  man  and  the  woman:  where  the 
Walhalla  of  our  old  Northern  ancestors  shall 
find  its  realization  in  a  concrete  reality,  and  the 
Walkurie  and  her  hero  feast  together  at  one 
board  in  a  brave  fellowship. 

Always  in  our  dreams  we  hear  the  turn  of 
the  key  that  shall  close  the  door  of  the  last 
brothel;  the  clink  of  the  last  coin  that  pays 
for  the  body  and  soul  of  a  woman ;  the  falling 
of  the  last  wall  that  encloses  artificially  the 
activity  of  woman  and  divides  her  from  man; 
always  we  picture  the  love  of  the  sexes  as  once 
a  dull,  slow,  creeping  worm;  then  a  torpid, 
earthy  chrysalis ;  at  last  the  full- winged  insect, 
glorious  in  the  sunshine  of  the  future. 

To-day,  as  we  row  hard  against  the  stream 
of  life,  is  it  only  a  blindness  in  our  eyes,  which 
have  been  too  long  strained,  which  makes  us 
see,  far  up  the  river  where  it  fades  into  the 
distance,  through  all  the  mists  that  rise  from 
the  river-banks,  a  clear,  a  golden  light?  Is  it 
only  a  delusion  of  the  eyes  which  makes  us 
grasp  our  oars  more  lightly  and  bend  our 
backs  lower;  though  we  know  well  that,  long 
[297] 


WOMAN    AND    LABOR 

before  the  boat  reaches  those  stretches,  other 
hands  than  ours  will  man  the  oars  and  guide 
its  helm?  Is  it  all  a  dream? 

The  ancient  Chaldean  seer  had  a  vision  of  a 
Garden  of  Eden  which  lay  in  a  remote  past. 
It  was  dreamed  that  man  and  woman  once 
lived  in  joy  and  fellowship,  till  woman  ate  of 
the  tree  of  knowledge  and  gave  to  man  to  eat ; 
and  that  both  were  driven  forth  to  wander,  to 
toil  in  bitterness;  because  they  had  eaten  of 
the  fruit. 

We  also  have  our  dream  of  a  Garden,  but  it 
lies  in  a  distant  future.  We  dream  that 
woman  shall  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  to- 
gether with  man,  and  that  side  by  side  and 
hand  close  to  hand,  through  ages  of  much  toil 
and  labor,  they  shall  together  raise  about  them 
an  Eden  nobler  than  any  the  Chaldean 
dreamed  of;  an  Eden  created  by  their  own  la- 
bor and  made  beautiful  by  their  own  fellow- 
ship. 

In  his  apocalypse  there  was  one  who  saw  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth;  we  see  a  new 
earth;  but  therein  dwells  love — the  love  of 
comrades  and  co-workers. 
[298] 


CERTAIN    OBJECTIONS 

It  is  because  so  wide  and  gracious  to  us  are 
the  possibilities  of  the  future;  so  impossible  is 
a  return  to  the  past,  so  deadly  is  a  passive 
acquiescence  in  the  present,  that  to-day  we  are 
found  everywhere  raising  our  strange  new  cry 
— "Labor  and  the  training  that  fits  us  for 
labor!" 


THE  END 


[299] 


from  which  it  was  borrowed  * 


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BKKMTAHO'8 

BaalurUrni  Jk  titatlM*r>, 

NEW  Yo««. 


